Facing a difficult budget last year, then chief minister Katy Gallagher said the states had no choice but to look at a higher or broader GST.

In January this year, Mr Barr said he was open to an increase in the GST in the context of wider tax reform.

However, after Monday's release of the federal white paper on tax, Mr Barr said his views on the GST didn't matter.

"Everyone is wasting their time and wasting their breath . . . if they think there's any chance of reform of the GST, it's just not going to happen," he said.

". . . That's completely off the table already . . . That conversation is, in the words of the Prime Minister, dead, buried and cremated before it was even born."

Instead, he said the federal government should focus on incentive payments to encourage the states to get rid of "inefficient and distortive taxes": the stamp duty on house sales and insurance taxes.

The ACT government began its 20-year program in 2012 to progressively abolish stamp duty on house sales, and a five-year program to abolish tax on insurance.

Mr Barr said the blow-out in this year's deficit would not halt the tax cuts.

"Every budget I deliver as Treasurer will cut stamp duty and will also cut insurance taxes until they are abolished," he said.

He expects a $770 million deficit this year, a result that vastly outweighs any deficit since self-government and has been made significantly worse by the Fluffy buyback.

The white paper said Australia's GST was one of the lowest of developed countries and about half the rate of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries.

It said stamp duties on house sales, insurance and car registrations – which, along with payroll tax, are the biggest source of state tax revenue – were some of the most inefficient taxes in the country.

Mr Barr said the white paper reinforced the "correctness" of the ACT's tax agenda.

He confirmed his June budget would continue the shift from stamp duty to rates.

The ACT budget was suffering a "short-term shock" from the Fluffy buyback but would return to balance as that washed through, and he planned "no change in fiscal policy settings".

"I'm not going to take any radical decisions that would increase unemployment [and] cut economic growth in the territory to respond to a one-off circumstance," he said. "The territory has a triple-A credit rating. We've got the best balance sheet of all of the states and territories, or the equal best. So there's no need to panic."

He was referring to the territory's assets versus liabilities.

The ACT's deficit greatly surpasses the deficit of any other state or territory, other than Western Australia, which is running a deficit of $1.29 billion; although on per capita basis, the ACT's deficit is more than four times that of Western Australia.

Mr Barr continued to push the case for change in ACTION buses on Monday, saying he had come to the conclusion that new players were needed in the market, and parts of the network could be separately tendered to private operators; such as buses linking to the tram, school buses and the Nightrider service.