Amidst allegations that the Australian Tax Office (ATO) crossed the line of decency on its Project Wickenby campaign, the office of the Inspector-General of Taxation hinted on Thursday that a review may be necessary to check on possible excesses in ATO's conduct as it goes after alleged wealthy tax evaders.

Inspector-General Ali Noroozi said that this may be right time to investigate the operations of ATO in order to find out if alleged tax offenders were given due process in light of accusations that the celebrated case of actor Paul Hogan was handled in a too heavy-handed manner.

Mr Noroozi said that he had received numerous complaints on the conduct of ATO, in which he said that taxpayers and advisers "believe some of the tactics are too heavy handed, that there are very long delays and that some of the due processes that should be there have not been followed."

Mr Hogan's case was a case in point, according to the Inspector-General, where the Crocodile Dundee star was ordered from leaving Australia during his brief visit in the country though the travel ban was eventually lifted following appeals from the actor's lawyers.

Mr Noroozi told ABC that the Hogan tax case pointed to possible questions on the Tax Office's conduct, specifying that the ATO is being questioned "whether, in carrying out their duties, they have given due weight to all the issues and whether they have afforded proper process to the taxpayer to respond to the allegations."

The Inspector-General acknowledged that it would be inappropriate to make specific comments on cases that have yet to be reviewed but he noted that ATO's handling of the Hogan case had encouraged more complaints being lodged to his office.

Mr Noroozi said that even before the media blitz was trained on the Hogan case, he had already received a number of complaints on the way the Tax Office has been handling its Project Wickenby and according to him, those grievances further piled up following the attention given to the actor's tax woes.

The Tax Office launched Project Wickenby in 2006 in order to combat the use of tax havens for tax avoidance, with the ATO asserting that the project has proven its effectiveness as it reported that as of the end of the past financial year, the project has been instrumental in the recovery of a total of $198.45 million in tax collections and prosecuted 58 tax cases that saw 11 convictions.