PAN stands for Permanent Account Number. This is a 10 character alpha- numeric number used for the identification of the tax paying Indian Nationals. Example: AAECP6176D, AGUPG4076H.
The first five characters are alphabets, next four are numerals and the last character is alphabet. Following is important to understand.
The fourth character indicates the type of holder of the card as under:
A — Association of Persons (AOP)
B — Body of Individuals (BOI)
C — Company
F — Firm
G — Government
H — HUF (Hindu Undivided Family)
L — Local Authority
J — Artificial Juridical Person
P — Individual
T — Trust(AOP)
K — Krish (Trust Krish)
The fifth character is the first character of either the last name or surname of an individual or first character of the name of holder which could be Entity, Trust, Society or Organisation.
The last character is an alphabetic check digit.