The Goods and Services Tax (GST) in Australia is a value added tax of 10% on most goods and services sales. GST is levied on most transactions in the production process, but is refunded to all parties in the chain of production other than the final consumer. The tax was introduced by the Howard Government and commenced on 1 July 2000, replacing the previous federal wholesale sales tax system and designed to phase out a number of various State and Territory Government taxes, duties and levies such as banking taxes and stamp duty.