By contrast Australia has GST (goods and services tax - 10% universal sales tax on almost everything except a few “essentials” exceptions like fresh food, some

By contrast Australia has GST (goods and services tax - 10% universal sales tax on almost everything except a few “essentials” exceptions like fresh food, some basic utilities? But is generally only paid by consumers - businesses claim back the GST that they pay ) which is collected federally. And all our tax is handled by one federal agency. Generally speaking all prices listed are GST inclusive at least for consumers and store fronts. You pay what the price sticker says. Where it breaks down for us is that GST revenue is split on a determined percentage per state that is unrelated to where it’s collected. There is some sense to that but it also causes problems as there is a strong imbalance which is argued about. On a related note we do have a 5% payroll tax on all salaries in businesses paying over some figure I think $2m/year. This apparently goes to the relevant state and is one of our little inconsistencies left compared to what is on the whole quite a good federally administered system by one agency. One tax return. One tax rate.