Know Your PAN Card Number by Name and Date of Birth

There is no official service that lets you know your PAN card number by name and date of birth alone. The Income Tax Department does not expose a name-and-DOB lookup, because PAN is sensitive identification and that combination isn’t considered sufficient to authenticate you. What does work: retrieving your PAN through Aadhaar-based OTP on the Income Tax e-filing portal if the two are linked, pulling the number off an old tax or bank document, or asking an institution that already has your PAN on file.

Why Name and Date of Birth Alone Won’t Return Your PAN

The “Verify Your PAN” service on incometax.gov.in asks for your PAN, full name, date of birth, and a mobile number for OTP.¹ Name and date of birth are inputs to confirm a PAN you already have; the PAN itself is required to run the check. The tool tells you whether a number is active, not what the number is.

So the practical question becomes: how do you recover the number itself? There are three routes, and most people succeed with one of them.

Retrieve It Through Aadhaar on the Income Tax Portal

If your Aadhaar is already linked to your PAN, the e-filing portal can show you your PAN after Aadhaar OTP verification. Go to incometax.gov.in and use the “Instant e-PAN” or “Check Status/Download e-PAN” option. Enter your Aadhaar number, complete OTP verification through the mobile number registered with your Aadhaar, and the portal will display your PAN details.

This is the fastest option when it applies, but it has two preconditions: the PAN and Aadhaar must already be linked, and the mobile number registered against your Aadhaar must be one you still have access to. If either is missing, this route won’t work and you’ll need to fall back to documents or institutions.

Find Your PAN in Documents You Already Have

Your PAN is almost certainly printed somewhere in paperwork you already own. The number never changes, so a document from a decade ago shows the same PAN you’d use today. Check these first:

Income Tax Return acknowledgments. Every ITR you’ve filed lists your PAN at the top.
Form 26AS or your Annual Information Statement. If you’ve ever downloaded your tax credit statement, your PAN is on it.
Bank account opening documents. Banks are required to collect your PAN for most account types.²
Salary slips and Form 16. Employers print your PAN on TDS certificates issued at year-end.
Investment and mutual fund statements. Any financial institution where you’ve invested will have the PAN on record.
An old photocopy of the card itself, loose in a file. That counts.

Ask Your Bank, Employer, or Broker

If no documents turn up, contact an institution that holds your PAN. Banks collect PAN for almost every account type except basic no-frills savings accounts such as Jan Dhan accounts.² Your employer’s payroll or HR team will also have it on file because they need it to deduct TDS. Most institutions can share your PAN once they’ve verified your identity, though the process varies.

Confirm the PAN Is Still Active Once You Find It

Finding the number is only half the task. A PAN can become inoperative if it hasn’t been linked to Aadhaar, and an inoperative PAN causes real financial problems. Once you have the number, use the “Verify Your PAN” tool on the e-filing portal: enter the PAN, your full name, your date of birth, and a mobile number for OTP. The OTP is valid for 15 minutes, and you get three attempts to enter it correctly.¹ The result tells you whether the PAN is active or inoperative.

Under Section 139AA of the Income Tax Act, every individual who held a PAN as of July 1, 2017, and is eligible for an Aadhaar number must link the two.³ If you haven’t, the PAN is treated as inoperative, with consequences worth knowing before you ignore it:

TDS on payments like fixed deposit interest or dividends jumps to 20% instead of the usual 10%.
TCS rises to 5% or double the regular rate, whichever is higher.
Any tax refund owed to you is held until the PAN becomes operative again, with no interest paid on the delay.
TDS credits won’t appear in your Form 26AS, and deductors may be unable to issue valid TDS certificates.
You lose the ability to submit Form 15G or 15H declarations to prevent TDS on interest income, even if your total income is below the taxable threshold.

Reactivating the PAN means linking it through the same portal and paying a Rs 1,000 fee.³ That’s cheap compared to months of excess deductions and a frozen refund.

If You’ve Never Been Allotted a PAN

None of these retrieval methods help if a PAN was never issued to you in the first place. In that case you apply fresh. Indian citizens use Form 49A, submitted online through the Protean (formerly NSDL) or UTIITSL portals or at designated physical centers. The online fee is around Rs 107 including taxes for an Indian communication address, with roughly Rs 887 added for dispatch to an address outside India.⁴ Foreign nationals and entities formed outside India use Form 49AA through the same portals.⁵

There is also a free option: the Income Tax portal’s Instant e-PAN service issues a digitally signed electronic PAN at no cost using your Aadhaar number and Aadhaar-linked mobile OTP.⁶ Instant e-PAN is strictly for individuals who have never been allotted a PAN, so it won’t recover an existing number. The applicant must be a major, and the Aadhaar KYC details must be current.⁷ If you’re uncertain whether a PAN was ever issued to you, run the “Verify Your PAN” check first on any number you suspect might be yours, or ask a bank or employer who might have it before applying for a new one; holding two PANs carries a penalty of up to Rs 10,000 under Section 272B.

1
Income Tax Department. Verify Your PAN User Manual
2
Press Information Bureau. Rules Regarding Quoting of PAN for Specified Transactions Amended
3
Income Tax Department. Link Aadhaar FAQ
4
Income Tax Department of India. Form PAN
5
Consulate General of India, San Francisco, USA. Permanent Account Number (PAN)
6
Income Tax Department. Instant E-PAN User Manual
7
Income Tax Department. Instant e-PAN FAQ