Government is set to unveil an ambitious PAN activity monitoring and analysis software tool that will enable Income Tax department to check transactions history of a person country-wide and help sleuths in effective tracking of black money trail. The digital and smart platform is called the Income Tax Business Application-Permanent Account Number (ITBA-PAN) and is currently being put to final tests by a special team of tax sleuths and business software analysts at a facility in the national capital.
The new software tool will enable the taxman to view, in a chronological order, the entire “PAN life cycle summary” or to simply say transactions history of an individual or entity where a PAN number has been quoted, in any part of the country.
The project is expected to be activated by the end of this month by the Finance Ministry and will also enable the tax department and its two intermediary organizations — NSDL and UTIITSL — to allocate a fresh PAN number and subsequently issue a new card in 48 hours flat as compared to the about 15 days time taken currently.
The operationalization of the project assumes significance as finance minister Arun Jaitley had recently said that the government is at an “advanced stage in considering the requirement of furnishing PAN card details if cash transactions beyond a certain limit are undertaken.”
