Know Your Jurisdictional Assessing Officer (JAO) - in fact JAO for any PAN - experience of utility and suggestions.

Know Your Jurisdictional Assessing Officer (JAO) - in fact JAO for any PAN - experience of utility and suggestions.

Webpage for enquiry of JAO with PAN is

https://eportal.incometax.gov.in/iec/foservices/#/pre-login/knowYourAO

Details required for

Know Your Jurisdictional Assessing Officer

* Indicates mandatory fields

PAN *

Mobile Number *

Cancel Continue

Bottom of Form

You have to enter PAN and mobile phone number correctly (above details ) and click continue.

In fact this page should be know Jurisdictional Assessing Officer for any PAN

Any mobile phone number:

You can ask details of JAO related to any PAN from any mobile phone number and not necessarily on phone number of concerned assessee / PAN holder or his registered Authorized Representative.

One time password / OTP:

Validity of OTP: After its transmission from system OTP is valid for 15 minutes irrespective of time when you received OTP on your mobile phone.

Sometimes OTP comes instantly means within few seconds, sometimes not even within 15 minutes. For example in my experience I received OTP within few seconds in two enquiries.

Once when OTP was not received I tried ' resend OTP' after about 7 minutes and on request of 'resend OTP' it came within few seconds.

In my fourth enquiry OTP did not appear, on attempting resend OTP after about seven minutes, message appeared to effect of exceeded attempts.

However page for enter OTP was still open and valid and it remained open till 15 minutes but OTP was not received within its validity period of 15 minutes from time of its transmission from system.

After fifteen minutes go back feature appeared and in that PAN and mobile number earlier entered in fourth PAN enquiry appeared but on clicking for send OTP, message appeared like

' You have exceeded the limit to invoke the service on this network. Please try after 8 hours.'

This means that this was considered a new attempt i.e fifth enquiry (although it was continuation for fourth PAN) .

This also means that at a time you can attempt enquire about JAO related to four PAN from same mobile phone.

If you want more enquiries then either you can use another mobile phone number or can enquire after eight hours on the same mobile phone number.

Long time spent:

It took about 25 - 35 minutes in enquiry of JAO related to three PAN and fourth enquiry failed because OTP was not received even within 15 minutes.

Kolkata vis a vis Calcutta in address of JAO

Name of city Calcutta was changed long ago. However, on successful enquiry of JAO related to three PAN having JAO in the same city in two cases Kolkata is mentioned and in one case still Calcutta is mentioned. In two cases PIN of concerned Post Office of Kolkata is mentioned however in case in which Calcutta is mentioned there is no PIN of concerned Post Office.

Names of many cities have been changed, similar cases can e found in other cities also.

Suggestions:

Based on a short experience author had on 30.05.2026 about enquiry of JAO some suggestions are given below:

The page should be described as Know JAO for any PAN

OTP transmission should be sure and quick.

Validity of OTP can be reduced fifteen minutes is very long it increases load and burden on system and can also lead to laziness of people using the utility.

There should not be limit for enquiries at any time from a single mobile phone number four enquiries allowed is not adequate. Because even in case of a small family and concerns of family members ( example H, W, S, SW, D, TWO HUF, firms, companies, AOP) number of PAN can be more.

The subject matter can be relevant to other similar websites for other taxes also therefore this article is placed under category other topics.