The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has told a US Senate Committee that the use of tax havens is spreading beyond large corporates and high-net-worth individuals to all parts of the community.

The ATO submission, made to the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs this week, said that the tax office was seeing examples of the ‘migration’ of tax haven use to small businesses and individuals.

It said it believed this was partly driven by globalisation, ease of travel, advances in communications and relatively low establishment costs.

However, it said that it believed there were also risks associated with the activity and that it had increased its efforts to educate the community on the dangers of using of tax havens at the same time as strengthening its ability to deter, detect and disrupt tax haven schemes typically linked to tax avoidance and evasion.