The ATO last week announced its focus for the 2010-11 financial year, saying it would triple the number of tax audits on small businesses to 26,000.

Tax Commissioner Michael D’Ascenzo said: “We will crack down on businesses using cash transactions to hide income and evade tax, using benchmarks for more than 100 industries and reviewing or auditing the activities of more than 26,000 micro businesses.”

The ATO defines micro businesses as those with an annual turnover of less than $2 million.

An ATO spokesperson told ProPrint: “While there are no specific compliance activities being conducted around the printing industry, they do form part of our broader compliance approach.”

D’Ascenzo said the ATO was focusing on encouraging and supporting taxpayers to do the right thing.

“We realise some businesses are still experiencing financial hardship as a result of the economic downturn and we will extend the measures to assist small businesses announced last year,” he said.

The spokesperson said the ATO was providing benchmarks to help small businesses meet their obligations. “Small business benchmarks are designed to help business meet their tax obligations by enabling them to track their performance against the rest of their industry.”

Click here for more information on the performance benchmarks for the printing industry.

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