When Rule 26C requires landlord PAN, when CBDT 8/2013 declaration substitutes, and where Form 60 (now Form 97) fits

Rule 26C^[1] trips at Rs 1,00,000 annual rent. Below the trigger, tenants compute HRA exemption under Section 10(13A)^[5] using self-declared receipts on Form 12BB (renamed Form 124 from 1 April 2026 under the Income Tax Rules 2026^[6]); the employer is not on the hook for landlord-side verification. Above the trigger, the employer becomes the first line of verification — granting the HRA exemption at the TDS stage requires collecting landlord name, address, and either PAN or a substitute document. The decision tree above resolves which path applies in each tenancy.

When the landlord has a PAN, the path is mechanical: the PAN goes on Form 12BB/124 alongside landlord name and address. Aadhaar is accepted as a substitute under the Form 12BB footnote — useful when the landlord has linked Aadhaar but cites no PAN, though after PAN 2.0^[7] launched 1 July 2025 most Aadhaar-holding adults can now generate a PAN themselves via Aadhaar OTP in ten minutes. The 2025 PAN-Aadhaar link deadline (31 December 2025) further closed the "PAN exists but is dormant" loophole — unlinked PANs went inoperative, and inoperative PANs on rent receipts route to manual review at the employer end.

When the landlord legitimately lacks a PAN — most commonly senior citizens drawing income only from rent below the basic exemption threshold, or NRIs without an Indian PAN — CBDT Circular No. 8/2013^[2] provides the substitute. It is a plain-paper declaration by the landlord stating that no PAN has been obtained, with name and address. The declaration is filed by the *tenant* with the employer as backup to Form 12BB/124; the receipt itself can still carry only the landlord's name and signature in this path. This is NOT Form 60. Conflating them is the single most common Rule 26C compliance error.

Form 60^[4] (renumbered as Form 97^[8] under the Income Tax Rules, 2026 from 1 April 2026; same purpose, new number) belongs to Rule 114B^[3] — the per-transaction PAN-quoting regime for eighteen enumerated high-value categories (motor vehicles, bank accounts, immovable property above Rs 10 lakh, goods or services above Rs 2 lakh, and the like). Rent to a landlord is not one of those eighteen; the monthly-rent PAN linkage runs through Section 194-IB^[9] instead, under which a tenant paying more than Rs 50,000 a month deducts 2% TDS and deposits it via Form 26QC. Form 60 is signed by the *payer* declaring no PAN, not by the landlord. A tenant can still meet more than one rule in a tenancy: Rule 26C landlord PAN (annual > Rs 1 lakh) at the year-end Form 12BB/124 stage, and Section 194-IB landlord PAN (monthly > Rs 50,000) at the Form 26QC stage. The CBDT 8/2013 declaration substitutes for the landlord PAN under Rule 26C; Form 60 is a Rule 114B instrument. Different documents, different signatories, different rules — they are not interchangeable.