95% of Realtors Have No PAN! Is This A Scheme To Skip Income Tax?

PAN (Permanent Account Number), is now a mandatory document for everyone now. However, in a shocking turn of events, it has been revealed that 95% of the 54,578 developers, builders and real estate agent registered with the registrar of companies (RoC) did not have a PAN number.

A performance audit by the CAG

A performance audit that was conducted across 12 major states in India by the comptroller and auditor general that revealed this shocking news. On cross verifying with the income tax department, it was not determined if these companies file their IT returns or not.

This audit was conducted in the real estate sector especially to determine if all developers, builders and real estate agents have PAN numbers and are registering for income tax returns. The CAG said, “Audit noticed several companies outside the tax net. There is no mechanism with the I-T department to ensure that all the registered companies have PAN and are filing their returns regularly.”

“RoCs did not have information about PAN in respect of 51,670(95%) of a total of 54,578 companies for which data was made available to audit,” remarked CAG, Comptroller and Auditor General of India.

Results and Statistics of the Report

The federal auditor deduced that there were no developer or builder or real estate agents in almost seven states have registered PAN numbers. This is the findings published in the report from the Parliament on Tuesday. These 7 states include West Bengal where out of the total 20,893 companies registered with the RoC, there is no company with a PAN number. In the case of UP, there are 7849 companies registered with the RoC with an absent PAN number. Bihar, Gujarat, Odisha, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand are the other states where no company registered with the RoC has a PAN number.

What do you think of companies not having PAN numbers? What is the motive? Share your opinions with us in the comments section!