PAN Card for Indians Living in the United Kingdom

Who in the UK Needs an Indian PAN Card?

The short answer: any Indian-origin person in the UK with financial connections to India. In practice, that covers an extraordinarily wide range of people. The UK is home to one of the most established and financially active Indian diaspora communities anywhere in the world — a community that has been in Britain for over six decades and whose ties to India are woven into everything from ancestral land in Gujarat to NRO fixed deposits in Chennai.

You need a PAN card if you:

• Own property in India or have inherited, or expect to inherit, property
• Receive rental income from a property in India
• Have an NRO bank account, fixed deposit, or savings account in India
• Invest in Indian mutual funds, shares, or bonds via an NRE/NRO account
• Send remittances to India exceeding certain thresholds (PAN increasingly required for banking KYC)
• File an Income Tax return in India (to claim TDS refunds, for example)
• Are involved in succession proceedings, inheritance, or probate for a deceased relative’s Indian estate
• Run a business with Indian suppliers, subsidiaries, or employees — and receive payments subject to TDS
• Are purchasing or registering property in India
• Need to close a deceased parent’s Indian bank account

If you are a British-Indian who has never set foot in India, but your parents or grandparents left property there, you may still need a PAN — because the Indian tax and legal system will require it the moment you become part of any transaction or legal process relating to that estate.

The UK Indian Community — A Multi-Generational Story

The Indian community in the UK is unlike the Indian diaspora almost anywhere else. It is uniquely layered, uniquely established, and uniquely complex in its relationship with India. Families have been in Britain for three and four generations. The PAN card requirements that apply to them are correspondingly varied.

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  Long-established families — 3rd and 4th generation

  Grandparents came from Gujarat, Punjab, Kerala, and Uttar Pradesh in the 1960s and 1970s — many as East African expellees, others directly from India. They built lives in Leicester, Coventry, Birmingham, Bradford. The family still holds ancestral property — agricultural land in Anand, a house in Jalandhar, a flat in Thrissur. Often it was never formally transferred. Decades have passed. Now grandchildren born in the UK are discovering they are legal heirs to property they have never visited. Succession certificates, legal heir certificates, probate, partition suits — all of these require a PAN.

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  NHS doctors, pharmacists, engineers — professional immigrants (1980s–2000s)

  India’s professional emigration to the UK spans decades. Doctors recruited directly by the NHS, pharmacists who built chains across England, engineers who joined British firms. This cohort has strong financial ties to India: rental income from properties in Hyderabad, Chennai, or Mumbai; NRO accounts accumulated over years; fixed deposits; family-managed portfolios of Indian shares. Without a PAN, 30% TDS is deducted at source on almost everything. With a PAN and proper IT return filing, they can claim treaty rates of 10–15% under the UK–India DTAA.

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  Recent arrivals on Skilled Worker visas

  Tech professionals, nurses, engineers, and accountants who arrived in the last five to ten years on what was formerly the Tier 2 visa, now the Skilled Worker visa. Many are sending regular remittances to parents in India, or have plans to purchase a flat in Bengaluru, Pune, or Hyderabad for retirement or to house parents. PAN is required for property purchase registration and increasingly for receiving bank transfers above certain amounts.

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  British citizens of Indian origin — OCI card holders

  British nationals who naturalised years or decades ago. Many hold OCI (Overseas Citizen of India) cards, which replaced the old PIO card. Their relationship with India is primarily through inheritance and estate matters. When a parent dies in India, the legal and banking processes that follow — transferring property, closing accounts, obtaining succession certificates — all require a PAN. Without one, the estate can be frozen for years.

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  British-Indian entrepreneurs

  Business owners who import from Indian suppliers, run Indian subsidiaries, or have entered the UK market via India-routed investment structures. TDS is deducted on payments made to them by Indian companies. Without a PAN, there is no way to claim TDS certificates or file for refunds. GSTIN compliance for cross-border invoicing also increasingly references PAN.

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  Leicester, Southall, Wembley, Birmingham, Bradford communities

  These cities and boroughs contain some of the most concentrated Indian communities in the world outside India. The Gujarati community centred in Leicester, the Punjabi community in Southall and Wembley, the South Indian community in parts of London — each has its own geographic and financial connections back to specific Indian states. Property disputes, land records, temple trusts, and family businesses straddle two countries.

Ancestral Property and Inheritance: The Critical Issue for UK Indians

For many British Indians, the PAN card issue comes to a head not during a planned financial transaction, but in the middle of a family crisis — the death of a parent or grandparent, and the discovery that estate settlement in India requires navigating the Indian legal and tax system from 4,000 miles away.

The multi-generational nature of the UK Indian community makes this particularly acute. A family in Leicester may be dealing with land in Gujarat that has been in the family since before Partition — land that passed from grandfather to father to a group of siblings scattered between the UK, the US, and India. The title may never have been formally transferred. There may be no registered will.

What is required to settle an Indian estate from the UK

• Legal heir certificate or succession certificate — issued by an Indian court, certifying who the legal heirs are. PAN is required for all applicants in the UK.
• Probate (where applicable) — for properties where the deceased left a registered will. The executor or beneficiaries named in the will need PAN to proceed with property mutation.
• Property mutation and title transfer — registering the change in ownership at the sub-registrar office in India. Requires PAN of all parties.
• Bank account closure or transfer — Indian banks will not close or transfer a deceased person’s account without PAN of the heirs, KYC documentation, and often a succession certificate.
• TDS on property sale proceeds — if the inherited property is subsequently sold, TDS is deducted. A PAN is essential to claim this back or apply reduced rates via DTAA.

The added complexity of agricultural land

A significant portion of ancestral property held by UK Indians — particularly Gujarati, Punjabi, and Sindhi families — is agricultural land. Agricultural land in many Indian states can only be held or inherited by Indian citizens or, in some states, by persons of Indian origin. NRIs and OCI holders face restrictions. Before proceeding with any transaction involving inherited agricultural land, independent legal advice from an Indian property lawyer is essential. PAN is still required for any legal proceedings even if the land ultimately cannot be held by an NRI.

UK–India Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement: What Your PAN Unlocks

The UK and India have a comprehensive Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement (DTAA), which has been in force since 1981 and has been updated several times since. For British Indians with income sourced in India, this treaty is financially significant — but you cannot benefit from it without a PAN.

To claim DTAA benefits, you will typically need: a valid PAN, a Tax Residency Certificate (TRC) from HMRC confirming you are a UK tax resident, and Form 10F filed with the Indian tax authority. None of this is possible without a PAN card as the starting point.

Which Form to Use: 49A vs 49AA — Post-Brexit OCI Rules

The form you use for your PAN application depends on your citizenship status, not your residency. This is a common source of confusion.

A post-Brexit note on OCI cards

After Brexit, OCI card holders in the UK lost certain preferential rights they had as de-facto EU residents. However, for the purposes of PAN card applications, OCI cards remain fully valid identity documents. Your OCI card can serve as your proof of Indian-origin identity when applying via Form 49AA. If your OCI card was issued on an old British passport (pre-Brexit), you may need to update it before using it for PAN applications, as the document numbers must match.

Time Zone Reality: Dealing with Indian Bureaucracy from the UK

The United Kingdom operates on GMT in winter and BST (GMT+1) in summer. India Standard Time (IST) is UTC+5:30. This means the UK is 4.5 hours behind India in summer and 5.5 hours behind in winter.

Indian government support lines and processing centres typically operate between 9:30 AM and 6:00 PM IST, Monday to Friday. Translated to UK time:

In practical terms, if you want to call an Indian tax office during its working hours, you need to be awake and at your phone by 5 AM in summer or 4 AM in winter. By lunchtime in India, it is already past 1:30 PM in the UK. You do get a narrow window in the morning — unlike US-based NRIs who often face complete misalignment — but it is still deeply inconvenient. This is why PAN Card Services recommends PAN Card Express, which handles India-side liaison on your behalf.

Real Scenarios: UK Indians Who Needed a PAN Card

These four scenarios are representative of the situations faced by British Indians. The names are illustrative.

Community-Specific Property Situations

The UK Indian community is not monolithic. Different communities have different connections to different parts of India — and those connections come with different legal and property landscapes.

Regardless of which Indian state your property or family ties are in, the PAN card is the universal first requirement. Every state-specific process — mutation, registration, succession, partition — will ask for it.

How to Get Your PAN Card from the UK

There are two routes: apply directly through India’s official portals, or use a professional service that handles the process for you.

Apply via PAN Card Express (Recommended)

PAN Card Services recommends PAN Card Express for UK-based NRIs. Given the time zone difficulty and the consequences of a rejected application (particularly when legal proceedings in India are waiting on a PAN), professional assistance is the practical choice. PAN Card Express handles the form completion, document review, and submission on your behalf, and can typically confirm your ePAN within 7–10 business days.

For UK Indians navigating a succession process, an inheritance, or any time-sensitive legal matter in India, the cost of a professional service is typically trivial compared to the cost of delays caused by a rejected application.

Documents UK Residents Need for PAN Application

All documents submitted must be self-attested (sign your name across the document). Notarisation from a UK solicitor or apostille is not required for a standard PAN application.

For more detail on every acceptable document, including what to do if you do not have standard forms of address proof, see our full Documents Required for NRI PAN Card guide.

Related guides

• How to Apply for a PAN Card as an NRI — Step-by-Step Guide
• Form 49A vs Form 49AA — Which to Use?
• PAN Card Fees for NRIs in 2026
• Common Mistakes in NRI PAN Applications
• PAN Card Express — Full Review