Everyone is saying to me that we can use PAN as foreign tax id, because it is issued by Indian Income Tax department. Even banks in India uses PAN to keep track on your tax.
Yeah… i thought the same before. Then confused after the replied from Envato.
I think we need to confirm with IRS or IT Dept. India.
I contacted IRS Certified ITIN Provider( praveenjain.com ), according to them, these are the minimum required documents to obtain a new ITIN.
1). A signed letter or document from the withholding agent(Envato) showing your name and verifying that an ITIN is required
2). Form 1042-S (mandatory)
3). Passport (standalone document)
Can not get ITIN before Envato incorporates in USA(because Form 1042-S is mandatory to get new ITIN).
Looks like some good news is around.
PAN might be the taxpayer identification number in India.
I read in Price Waterhouse Coopers website, the link is below,
In the 5th paragraph, they refer this
Although the PAN is intended solely to create a taxpayer identification number, it is anticipated that by obtaining a PAN the firm will be entered into the database of Indian Tax Authorities and will be subject to increased monitoring.
Another website
Here they quote " PAN is a unique tax
identification number allotted by the
Indian Tax Authority. "
If you guys get anything, keep posting
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Yes something like is also mentioned on Wiki page, but we need to 100% before entering anything.
It’s good to see that discussions are coming. 
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We dont need to be 100% right, we declare “it is to the best of our knowledge” that the info provided in the form is right.LOL just kidding. 
Also was reading International Taxation and looks like every country A to Z has “withholding tax” including India.
even paypal and payoneer uses PAN.
Envato must clerify on this issue.
Hi,
Thanks for the post. According to the post that you pointed, it seems like PAN is the tax identification number in india from the perspective of USA after reading this point
Effective April 1, 2010, every non-resident that receives income from India is required
to obtain a Permanent Account Number (“PAN”) from the Indian Income Tax
Authorities and provide it to the Indian payor. In the absence of this tax identification number
, the payor is required to withhold taxes at a minimum rate of 20% or the
higher applicable rate
Also note: there is no TIN for service providers because the term TIN is different. TIN stands for Tax-Payer Identification Number, is unique number `allotted by Commercial tax department of respective State. It’s an eleven digit number to be mentioned in all VAT transactions and correspondence. TIN number is used to identify dealers registered under VAT.
But envato needs to confirm this.
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Yeah. It is a shame that nowhere in incometax india website, they mention PAN as Tax Id Number, even though the definitions seem to point in that directions.
I was reading the FATCA(Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act) and CRS(Common Reporting Standard) compliance of Bank like HDFC, ICICI for mutual funds etc and they seem to mean PAN as our Tax ID number.
I have already submitted my W8 form in our author dashboard with PAN number. Let me see what happens.
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Good luck +1
Please let us know further.
Don’t do this you might not able withdraw your earning via paypal if your account is not from same country.
I just posted your finding on the other thread, we need more likes to the reply in order to get any answer from envato. Let’s see…
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- Passport ? - is that required ? - i don’t see how passport looks like.
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@Muse_Master
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Ha.Ha. Thanks for that - but i am not going to apply for passport
Waiting to see they will accept PAN Card details or not.
We all have PAN Card, hope this is the correct Tax Identification Number for W-8BEN form 
Its not easy to get an ITIN/EIN.
If PAN card is not tax id, then it’s time to leave country as soon as possible.
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we all are confusing with the US tax terms/definitions. EIN is also know as Federal Tax Identification Number or TIN. TIN is the umbrella term for all Tax IDs in US
from wikipedia
In USA, a TIN may be:
- a Social Security number (SSN)
- an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN)
- an Employer Identification Number (EIN), also known as a FEIN
(Federal Employer Identification Number) - an Adoption Taxpayer Identification Number, used as a temporary
number for a child for whom the adopting parents cannot obtain an
SSN[3] - a Preparer Tax Identification Number, used by paid preparers of U.S.
tax returns[4]
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Collis has already answered (to Russian author, search for “GreenSocks” in that post) that you can use the local Tax ID (its PAN in India) as Foreign Tax ID in W8 form.
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for every indian tax payer PAN is the most important unique identification number. we pay income tax on that number. after all we will be claiming benefits of this 15% paid tax on PAN.
What will happen if authors provide wrong ITIN ? how envato will verify that authors had provided correct tax identification number if they don’t know what exactly is needed ? after all they will need to validate correct ITIN before holding 30%. so better envato team make some research on this and tell us what exactly we should enter.