The Australian Tax Office (ATO) said on Thursday that it is set to launch a data matching program that will aid the agency in tracking online retailers who have breached the $20,000 mark in selling good and services within the past three financial years.

The office said that major target of its new campaign were sellers using the platform of eBay and Trading Post as it issued warning that online sales should be included in filing of tax returns and any dodging would amount to nothing since the data matching system could identify online operations which have failed to report or under-reported profits from online sales.

On the other hand, Tax Commissioner Michael D'Ascenzo reminded that online retailers can opt to make voluntary disclosures and if they elected to do so, "they will be treated fairly and benefit from significantly lower penalties," adding that such actions should be done by sending formal letters to the ATO.

Mr D'Ascenzo said that data matching will allow the office to bring collect information for purpose of compilation and identification of persons and businesses which are deliberately avoiding their tax obligations.

He said that the system will match data carried in tax returns with up to 500 million pieces of third party information, specifying that "records will be matched against different identifiers such as tax file numbers, ABN's, addresses and date of births which will improve the integrity of the data matching program."

However, ATO said that taxpayers could very well avoid all the inconveniences by initiating a voluntary disclosure and enjoy at the same time reduced penalties of up to 80 percent.