DCHP-2

goods and services tax GST DCHP-2 (August 2016)

• n. — Finance, Administration

  a federal value-added tax applied to most goods and services.

  Type: 3. Semantic Change — The term was first used in New Zealand in the mid 1980s, after which Canada followed suit with its own version of the tax in 1991 (see the 1989 quotation), with the exception of the province of Quebec, where the roughly equivalent but independently administered QST was introduced. Set by the federal government, the Canadian goods and services tax was first applied at a rate of 7%, but has since been reduced, in two steps (see the 2006 and 2008 quotations) to a rate of 5% since 1 Jan. 2008. As Chart 1 shows, the term is still most widely used in New Zealand and Australia, although in the North American context, Canada obviously stands out.
  See also COD-2, s.v. "goods and services tax", which labels the term "Cdn & NZ".

  See also: GST  harmonized sales tax  

  • The initialism GST is much more commonly used than the full phrase.