When a rent receipt triggers PAN collection under Rule 114B — the full decision path

Rule 114B of the Income Tax Rules 1962 lists eighteen transaction categories where the payer must quote PAN. Rent payments to a single landlord above Rs 50,000 per month became one of those categories from 1 April 2023; before that, the trigger was only the aggregate Rs 1 lakh annual threshold under Rule 26C. Tenants and HR teams now have two parallel PAN-collection rules to satisfy.

The decision tree above resolves both. If the rent exceeds Rs 50,000 in a single month, Rule 114B forces PAN at the transaction. If aggregate rent for the year crosses Rs 1 lakh, Rule 26C forces PAN at the Form 12BB (renamed Form 124 from 2026-04-01) submission. The PAN can be the landlord's real PAN, the landlord's PAN 2.0 instant e-PAN issued via Aadhaar OTP, or a Form 60 (renumbered Form 97 from 1 April 2026 under the Income Tax Rules, 2026) declaration if the landlord has neither — but in 2026, instant e-PAN is a ten-minute exercise that closes off the no-PAN excuse.

The downstream penalty is Section 206AA — the payer must deduct TDS at 20% on the rent payment if PAN is missing and Form 60 is not on file. For salaried tenants this disrupts HRA exemption directly; the employer cannot grant the deduction in Form 16 if the underlying receipt fails PAN verification. The cost of the no-PAN path scales with rent: a tenant paying Rs 60,000 per month and skipping the PAN block triggers Rs 12,000 monthly TDS on the rent — a Rs 1.44 lakh annual cash-flow hit on top of the disallowed HRA.