About $3 billion in revenue may be missing because of tax evasion and misreporting. Credit:Sam Bennett

In response to questions from Fairfax Media, the ATO said in 2015-16, 600 taxpayer reviews will be undertaken within the ATO, and a "handful" of these would be randomly audited which could include letters or phone calls, but no door knocks as happened in the United States with Internal Revenue Service agents. "Only in instances where we identify strong reasons to believe the taxpayer has not complied with their tax obligations, would the taxpayer then be escalated to audit," an ATO spokesman said.

The move was made after an expert panel consisting of former OECD senior adviser Richard Highfield, UNSW Australian School of Business Professor Neil Warren, and Deloitte Access Economics director Chris Richardson had advised the ATO that it only use random audits or SMEs (small and medium enterprises) and individuals. "There's a bit of a culture shock [that's been] required among some ATO staff to go down this path," Mr Highfield said.

Tax Commissioner Chris Jordan told Parliament's Standing Committee on Tax and Revenue last year random audits had the potential to upset taxpayers who were doing the right thing and there could be high costs involved in doing random audits. "It is a live issue and one that has been holding us back a little bit as to whether it is worth doing," Mr Jordan said.

CPA Australia chief executive Alex Malley told Fairfax Media he was not supportive of random audits. "One of the concerns with random audits is that their purpose may be more about the integrity of a process than revenue collection," he said.