You Get One PAN. For Life.
The most common misunderstanding about PAN in Nepal is that personal PAN and business PAN are two different numbers you might both hold. They are not. They are two states of the same number.
The Inland Revenue Department’s own FAQ is unambiguous:
“Can one person take more than one PAN? No. A person — natural person or entity — can take only one PAN in their lifetime. Only one PAN remains. You must go on adding your types of business to it.”
And: “One person does not have two permanent account numbers.” You also cannot tell a natural person from a company by looking at the number — the format does not distinguish them.
So if you hold a personal PAN and now want to trade, you do not apply for a second one. You apply to convert the existing number to a business PAN, with the firm’s registration documents. The conversion runs both ways.
The one case where you genuinely do need a new PAN: converting a sole proprietorship into a Pvt. Ltd. The company is a separate legal person, so it gets its own PAN. Your personal one stays yours. This is the opposite of the conversion case and people routinely get the two the wrong way round.
| Personal PAN (व्यक्तिगत) | Business PAN (व्यावसायिक) | |
|---|---|---|
| Who | Salary and wage earners, landlords, anyone with assessable income or who withholds tax, not trading under a registered firm | A registered sole proprietorship, Partnership Firm, company, cooperative or NGO — and a natural person trading |
| Portal menu | Application For PPAN Registration | Application For Business Registration |
| Can carry VAT | No | Yes — on the same number |
Watch the naming trap: the form called “व्यवसायिक पान … (व्यक्तिगत)” is the business PAN form for a natural person trading as a sole proprietor. “व्यक्तिगत पान” is the personal one. The names are almost identical and the forms are not.
The Deadline Is “Before You Trade” — Not Thirty Days After Registration
You will read everywhere that PAN must be obtained within 30 days of registering your company or firm. Section 78 of the Income Tax Act 2058 contains no period at all.
What it says, at s.78(4), is that the person concerned “shall obtain a permanent account number before carrying on transactions”. Rule 23(1) of the Income Tax Rules 2059 says the application is made “prior to earning such income or withholding tax”.
The IRD FAQ puts it plainly: asked whether a newly established industry can wait until it starts making a profit, the answer is “No … PAN must be applied for and obtained before starting the industry, trade, profession or business.”
Where the thirty days came from. There are two 30-day periods in this area, and neither is the one being quoted: Rule 23A gives you 30 days to apply to suspend a PAN, and VAT Act s.10(2) gives you 30 days to register for VAT after the tax becomes applicable. The VAT rule appears to have been borrowed and attached to PAN.
And note s.78(5): not holding a PAN does not relieve you of tax. The liability exists either way.
Which Rules Actually Govern PAN
Guidance that cites a rule number almost always cites Rule 6 or Rule 10. Rule 6 is about payment of petty amounts; Rule 10 is about contracts with deferred consideration. Neither has anything to do with PAN.
| Rule | What it does |
|---|---|
| 23 | Application for PAN; biometric record update; the duty to issue serially numbered invoices showing name, address and PAN |
| 23A | Suspension of PAN — apply within 30 days, with the return and tax to that date; the Department decides within 30 days |
| 23B | Duplicate on loss or destruction — issued within three days |
| 24 | Notify any change in your PAN details within fifteen days |
| 24A | New in 2081 — submit details of the bank account opened in the business’s name |
| 25 | Notify any change in the place of transactions |
How to Register
1. Get a submission number first
Before you enter any data, the portal asks for a username, a password of six characters or more, contact number and email, whether you want personal or business registration, and which office will handle it. It returns a submission number.
Note that down. It identifies the application, it is needed to print the form, and the Tax Officer verifies against it. You can log back in and edit until you press Submit; after that the Save and Submit buttons disable and only Print works.
The office is chosen at this step, before any data entry. Choosing the wrong one means starting again rather than transferring.
2. Which office is yours
Your Inland Revenue Office is fixed by where you live, where you trade (for a proprietorship, the firm’s main address), or where you are employed. There are 45 Inland Revenue Offices, plus the Medium Level Taxpayers Office (turnover NPR 50–100 crore) and the Large Taxpayers Office (above NPR 100 crore). A new registrant never starts at the Large Taxpayers Office — you are moved there on turnover.
Write “Inland Revenue Office”, not “Taxpayer Service Office”. Taxpayer Service Offices were struck out of the VAT Rules Schedule–1 by the Twenty-Eighth Amendment in 2083 and removed from the VAT Act by the Finance Act 2083. The 2083 citizen charters now refer to a करदाता सेवा शाखा — a service branch inside the IRO.
3. Fill in, submit, print
Enter the details, Save, then Submit. Print the application. For personal PAN the flow ends with an OTP to your mobile and email, after which the PAN is issued and you can print it from your own login.
4. Attend in person for the biometric
This is the step that cannot be delegated. The IRD FAQ: “applying can be done over the internet or by giving someone else an authorisation, but since biometrics must be done and the certificate must be signed when registering the PAN card, you must be present yourself.”
For a natural person, your photo is taken at the office and biometrics recorded. For an entity, it is the person named in the board decision — not every director and not every shareholder.
The route that skips the office entirely
If you hold a National ID card, you can obtain a personal PAN yourself, entirely online. IRD’s own explainer describes creating the personal PAN automatically online on the basis of the National ID number, and the 2083 citizen charter of Inland Revenue Office Kalanki confirms it in the personal-PAN row.
There is no obligation on an existing PAN holder to link to the National ID. It is a route, not a requirement.
And the route for new companies
Since Asar 15, 2083 (29 June 2026), completing company registration through CAMIS creates the PAN automatically, and the certificate can be downloaded and printed from CAMIS. OCR’s launch event describes exactly this.
Two cautions, because this is being oversold.
First, no source says the biometric visit is waived. The automatic PAN removes the application trip. Whether it removes the in-person enrolment is not addressed anywhere — and OCR’s own “after incorporation” page still tells companies to obtain PAN from the relevant Inland Revenue Office before commencing business.
Second, and this is statutory: the proviso to s.78(1) allows a body approved by the Department to issue a PAN, but a taxpayer receiving a PAN so issued may not carry on import or export transactions until a period fixed by the Department. If your company will import or export, a CAMIS-issued PAN is not yet the finished article.
What to Take With You
| Applicant | Documents |
|---|---|
| Individual | Online application; citizenship certificate. A foreign national brings a letter from the employing institution, an official identity document, a passport, and a labour permit where one is required. |
| Sole proprietorship | Firm registration certificate copy; 2 passport photos of the person signing; proprietor’s citizenship copy; a hand-drawn sketch map showing the main place of business; land ownership certificate (lalpurja) if you own the premises, otherwise the rent agreement. The proprietor attends in person. Add copies of all firm registrations if you own more than one. |
| Partnership Firm | The entity list below, plus two photos of each partner and Annex 3 listing every partner, main partner first, plus the partners’ minute and their citizenship copies. |
| Pvt. Ltd. | Company registration certificate copy; 2 passport photos of the signatory; directors’ citizenship copies; sketch map of the main place of business; lalpurja or rent agreement; the board minute naming who will sign and give biometrics. The authorised representative attends. |
The single most forgotten item is the sketch map. A hand-drawn map identifying the business premises is required in three separate official IRD documents, and nobody issues it to you — you draw it. Bring it.
The 2083 citizen charter also accepts the landlord’s electricity bill as an alternative to their ownership certificate.
What is expressly not required, in IRD’s own words: “when applying for PAN, a tax clearance certificate, old income statements, tax amounts or advance tax deductions need not be submitted.” Consultants ask for these. IRD does not.
Note also that some items in circulation appear in no official IRD source: MoA and AoA copies, the house-owner’s land tax receipt, shareholder citizenship copies (IRD asks for directors’), and the partnership deed (IRD asks for the registration certificate). Bring them if you have them, but nobody has been able to point us at the rule.
Fee and Timeline
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Business PAN, and VAT registration | Free |
| Personal PAN | Free |
| Tax clearance certificate | Free |
| Deregistration (close of business) | Free |
| Duplicate certificate | Was NPR 100 — abolished by the VAT (Twenty-Eighth Amendment) Rules 2083, which struck the fee wording out of Rule 14 |
| Revenue stamp on the paper form | NPR 5 (the online route has none) |
Timeline: same day. IRD’s FAQ answers “how long does it take to get a PAN?” with “it takes no time, it is obtained immediately”, and the 2083 citizen charter gives the completion time for both business and personal PAN as “on a token and queue basis” — that is, while you wait.
The commonly quoted “1–3 days” is elapsed calendar time because the online step and the office step usually fall on different days. It is not IRD processing time.
The route through a chamber of commerce
FNCCI and CNI act as verifying officers. They issue a निस्सा immediately and the permanent certificate follows within three months; you may also collect it yourself from the IRO. VAT cannot be registered this way — IRD is explicit that VAT registration must be done at the Inland Revenue Office.
What Holding a PAN Obliges You To Do
This is the part people discover late. A PAN is not an identifier you collect and forget — it starts a filing cycle that runs whether or not you trade.
| Obligation | Deadline | Section |
|---|---|---|
| Annual income tax return | Within 3 months of year end — end of Ashoj | s.96(1) |
| Extension, on written application made within the original deadline | Maximum 3 further months — end of Poush | s.98 |
| Estimated tax return | By the date of the first instalment | s.95 |
| Instalments — 40%, 70%, 100% cumulative | End of Poush, Chaitra, Ashad | s.94 |
| Notify a change in PAN details | 15 days | Rule 24 |
The extension buys filing time, not payment time. Section 119(2) is explicit that interest is not waived for the extended period, and the IRD FAQ says the same: self-assessed tax must be deposited by the original Ashoj deadline, and getting an extension to file does not stop interest running at 15% a year.
Instalments below NPR 7,500 in total are not payable (s.94(2)), and if your estimate comes in below 90% of the actual liability, interest runs under s.118.
A nil year is still a filing year
The Section 117 fee attaches to the return, not to the tax — it accrues whether or not anything was owed. A registered firm or company is not on the s.97(1) list of persons excused from filing. A dormant Pvt. Ltd. files a return with audited nil accounts, or accrues the fee. See our guides to nil audit and tax filing deadlines.
A PAN is never renewed — IRD: “PAN is a permanent identity card. It does not need to be renewed.” But Rule 24’s fifteen-day duty to notify changes runs for as long as you hold it.
The Enforcement That Actually Bites Is on Your Customers
The direct penalty for trading without a PAN is Section 119A, a fee of NPR 5,000 to NPR 25,000, and IRD applies it to PAN directly. You may also find yourself unable to import, export, transact with banks or deal with government bodies.
Section 119A was restructured by the Finance Act 2083 to carry electronic-invoicing penalties, and we have not been able to confirm from the Gazette text whether the residual NPR 5,000–25,000 fee survives alongside it in its original form. Treat that figure as needing confirmation with the IRD.
But the commercially heavier consequence is in Section 21, and it falls on the people who pay you:
| Rule | Threshold | Section |
|---|---|---|
| An expense against an invoice that does not state the PAN is not deductible | Above NPR 2,000 | s.21(1)(d2) |
| Remuneration and wages paid to employees with no PAN are not deductible — except casual wages | Casual carve-out up to NPR 3,000 | s.21(1)(d1) |
| Remuneration over NPR 25,000 per person per month not paid through a bank is not deductible | NPR 25,000/month | s.21(1)(e1), new in 2081 |
| A single cash payment above the cap is not deductible | Now NPR 25,000, for any person — was NPR 50,000 and only for those above NPR 20 lakh turnover | s.21(2), changed by Finance Act 2083 |
Direct purchases of agricultural, forest, livestock and household goods from a natural person not carrying on business remain deductible without the seller’s PAN.
Two more worth knowing, both new and rarely mentioned: s.81A (added 2081) prohibits depositing business receipts into a personal bank account, by cash, cheque, QR or any electronic means — aimed squarely at sole proprietors. And s.82A (new in 2083) lets the Department obtain, electronically, information about a person’s financial transactions.
A Dated Window for Dormant PAN Holders
Finance Act 2083, s.40(2). A person who holds a PAN but never traded, and has not filed for FY 2081/82 or earlier, must file the FY 2082/83 return with tax and apply either to cancel the registration or to resume trading. Earlier years are then not required.
Miss it and the PAN is cancelled automatically by the system. Reactivating afterwards means filing every year’s return with tax, fee and interest.
Deadline: end of Poush 2083 — approximately mid-January 2027. Confirm the exact date with the IRD before relying on it; we have not been able to read the Gazette text, which is published as an image scan.
Companion reliefs in the same window: s.40(1) for someone who earned taxable income but never took a PAN — take one, file FY 2079/80 to 2082/83, pay the tax, and all fee and interest is waived with nothing due for earlier years; s.40(3) for an active PAN in arrears — file and pay the tax plus 1%, and fee and interest are waived; and s.41 on the VAT side.
Note that this is the tax window, and it is not the same as the Companies Act one. The OCR penalty waiver under Finance Act 2083 s.48 closes at the end of Ashoj 2083 — roughly three months earlier. Two different offices, two different deadlines, and they are routinely conflated.
PAN and VAT Are the Same Number
Every VAT registrant has a PAN; not every PAN holder is VAT-registered. And VAT registration does not mint a second number — the evidence is in the forms themselves. Schedule–1 of the VAT Rules 2053, the VAT registration application, is headed “Application form for a business Permanent Account Number (PAN)” with two tick boxes, आयकर and मू.अ.कर. Schedule–3, the certificate, is headed “PAN registration certificate” with a separate field for the VAT registration date.
One form, one number, two registrations, and a date stamp. See our VAT registration guide for the thresholds and what VAT adds on top.
Why Applications Get Rejected
- Nobody attends for the biometric, or for an entity the wrong person attends — it must be the one named in the board decision.
- A Partnership Firm files without photos of every partner or a complete Annex 3.
- Wrong Inland Revenue Office — locked in at the submission-number step, before any data entry.
- No sketch map of the business premises.
- No property proof — neither lalpurja nor rent agreement, and no landlord ownership certificate or electricity bill.
- Trying to obtain a second PAN. The remedy is conversion of the one you have.
- Illegible uploads — scans must be black and white at the minimum resolution; oversized files time out.
- Assuming a CAMIS-issued PAN covers import and export. The proviso to s.78(1) says it does not, until the Department permits.
Frequently Asked
Can I have both a personal and a business PAN in Nepal?
No. IRD states that a person can hold only one PAN in their lifetime, and that one person does not have two permanent account numbers. Personal and business PAN are two states of the same number. If you hold a personal PAN and start trading, you apply to convert it rather than to obtain a second. The one genuine exception is incorporating a Pvt. Ltd., because the company is a separate legal person and receives its own PAN.
How many days after company registration must I get a PAN in Nepal?
There is no such period. Section 78(4) of the Income Tax Act 2058 requires the PAN to be obtained before carrying on transactions, and Rule 23(1) requires the application prior to earning income or withholding tax. The widely repeated “30 days” matches Rule 23A, which is the deadline to apply for suspension of a PAN, and VAT Act s.10(2), which is the deadline to register for VAT.
How much does a PAN cost in Nepal?
Nothing. The 2083 citizen charter of the Inland Revenue Office lists business PAN, VAT registration, personal PAN, tax clearance and deregistration all as निःशुल्क — free of charge. The NPR 100 duplicate-certificate fee that IRD’s older guidance mentions was abolished by the VAT (Twenty-Eighth Amendment) Rules 2083. A paper form carries a NPR 5 revenue stamp; the online route does not.
Do I have to visit the tax office in person to get a PAN in Nepal?
Usually yes. Applying can be done online or through an authorised representative, but IRD requires you to be present in person because biometrics are recorded and the certificate is signed at the office. For an entity it is the person named in the board decision who attends, not every director. The exception is a personal PAN where you hold a National ID card — that can be obtained entirely online.
Do I need to file a return if my company had no income in Nepal?
Yes. The Section 117 late-filing fee attaches to the return rather than to the tax, so it accrues on a nil year. A registered firm or company does not appear on the Section 97(1) list of persons excused from filing. A dormant private limited company files its return with audited nil accounts. This is the most expensive misunderstanding in Nepali compliance precisely because it is silent.
About this guide. Sections 21, 78, 78A, 81A, 82A, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 117, 118, 119 and 119A are from the Income Tax Act 2058 as consolidated to the Finance Act 2082 and published by the Inland Revenue Department; Rules 23 to 25 from the Income Tax Rules 2059. Process detail comes from IRD’s published FAQ, its registration standard operating procedures and the 2083 citizen charter of Inland Revenue Office Kalanki; the duplicate-fee abolition from the VAT (Twenty-Eighth Amendment) Rules 2083, Nepal Gazette 2083.02.15. Note that the English translations of the Income Tax Act in general circulation are years out of date and disagree with the current Nepali text on real figures. Two items above are flagged in the text as unconfirmed — the residual Section 119A fee after the Finance Act 2083 restructured that section, and the exact Gregorian date of the end of Poush 2083. Confirm both with the IRD.
Need a PAN for Your Business?
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