West Australian Treasurer Mike Nahan says stamp duty is "dumb" but the State Government has no plans to overhaul it.
In a speech to an economics forum in Perth, Dr Nahan said the state had come to rely on inefficient taxes, but reform was not an option.
"Our largest tax base, besides pay roll, is stamp duty on housing transactions which is actually a tax on people moving house - about as dumb as you can get," Dr Nahan said.
"Even when the GST was put in it was agreed that stamp duty is amongst the worst [taxes], particularly transfer fees on housing.
"It's a bad tax but it's a very important tax to us and we have no alternative."
Dr Nahan was also critical of the Commonwealth Grants Commission, describing it as a dead weight on the growth of the nation.
He said 65 cents in every dollar earned in WA was redistributed to other states, at a time when the money could be spent on badly needed infrastructure to promote the state's growth.
While he expected the Prime Minister would propose increasing the rate of the GST at the next election, WA would not co-operate unless it was given a bigger share of the funding.
"We're going to use the GST debate as leverage to change the way GST is delivered," he said.
"And beyond that, we won't stop until we get the change in the distribution system."
The Treasurer said GST distribution was critical.
"In four years we expect to get only 11 cents out of every dollar back that we pay," he said.
"That's unacceptable and as a state we will require changes to the distribution before any other change."
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