The " forgotten " tax.

Remember all the uproar when the Goods and Services tax ( GST ) was introduced nearly a decade ago ?

Now it is something that is taken for granted. Few people take note of the GST component listed at the bottom of each sales docket - except for accountants and those whose business it is to compile tax returns.

Now the dust has settled and the political point scoring ended this is seen as an absolutely " fair " tax - because everybody pays it !

It's not a tax that the clever or the wealthy can dodge, and it doesn't matter if you are an Australian citizen or a tourist. If you have a hair cut, buy a meal, go and watch the football - or buy a movie ticket - you pay ten percent to the tax man - and that is ten percent that would otherwise be collected by a more discriminatory tax if there was no GST.

Lets face it. Money has to come from somewhere to run this state - and the GST is essentially a state tax !

The other surprise is that the promise of not raising that tax from ten percent has been kept - and that is not the experience of the rest of the world. In some countries the VAT or whatever name the tax has been given has increased on a regular basis - in some instances to as much as twenty-five percent of every purchase.

Nobody rants about the GST these days - and neither should they. Compared to every other form of taxation - this one is fair and honest - and with the passage of time we have almost forgotten that we are being taxed !