evidence: As on July 25, a total of 63.7 lakh taxpayers migrated from the old system, while 49.53 lakh new taxpayers became part of the indirect tax system taking the total number of taxpayers under GST to more than 1.13 crore. These include 17.66 lakh taxpayers who have opted for the composition scheme. The government expects the total number of assessees to go up as the GST Council has decided to give businesses one more chance to migrate to the new system. To incentivise them, migrants may be allowed to file GST return for the July 2017-August 2018 period without any late fee. [...] The GSTN study found that during the pre-GST regime, more than 60 per cent taxpayers were in the turnover slab ‘up to ₹20 lakh’. Post-GST, that came down to 52.24 per cent. Since some States earlier had a threshold of below ₹20 lakh or even below ₹10 lakh, many small businesses went out of the tax net, lowering their share in the total GST payers. The share of taxpayers with turnover of ₹5 crore or less has fallen to 93.29 per cent, against 94.25 per cent earlier.