The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) said today that it would intensify efforts to collect more taxes specifically targeting some small business owners who reportedly resort to cash transactions in order to evade paying their tax obligations.

ATO second commissioner Bruce Quigley revealed that the federal government has granted the agency more funding which it intends to use to launch a crackdown on those deliberately avoiding paying taxes.

He added that this is an area that the tax office have identified over a number of years as an area of risk "but we've had over the last 12 months or so an increase in our data matching capability which allows us to identify businesses that potentially aren't returning all the income that they should."

Mr Quigley surmised that the economic downturn could be the main reason some businesses considered evasive ways to avoid tax obligations and possibly save more money as he added that evidence have shown that in time of economic crisis "some businesses dropped the ball as far as their obligations to pay to the tax office the amounts that they collect from their wages."

These businesses also skip on their obligations to pay their employees superannuation guarantee, according to Mr Quigley, and the money saved were used as working capital in their business.

The tax office said that last year alone, some $100 million of unpaid taxes by small firms were uncovered while large companies apparently accumulated skipped tax obligations that reached $1 billion.

ATO said that it is set to focus on offshore transactions and Australians worth more than $30 million could invite scrutiny, which is an effort that evidently annoyed many small enterprises.

United Retail Federation national president Scott Driscoll said that the tax office is bent too much in filling a big black hole and the small business players are being targeted unfairly, as he stressed that "we've seen this Government really treating the small business sector again now with another audit in this form of a tax audit as the cash cow."

On the other hand, the Council of Small Business Organisations of Australia executive director Peter Strong is unperturbed by the threat of scrutiny, arguing that should that tax office found 26,000 erring small businesses, "then that proves that small business in Australia is fantastically honest because there's 2 million of us roughly and 26,000 is just a blip."

The ATO gave assurance that struggling small businesses would be entitled to get interest free payment arrangements for the next 12 months, that is if elect to come forward and seek the office's assistance.