Fed funding cuts are a GST ploy: Pallas

Cutting health and education funding is a ploy to force state governments to ask for a GST increase, Victorian Treasurer Tim Pallas says.

He said tax reform proposals shifting costs from the federal government to state governments were an attempt to push the states into a corner.

"What Joe Hockey and Tony Abbott are trying to do is to force the states to a position where they're impoverished and they go begging for a GST rate increase," Mr Pallas said on Wednesday.

Mr Pallas said he had looked through the federal tax proposals and wasn't thrilled.

"It seems every time there's a budgetary issue confronting the federal government they like to export them to the states," he said.

"It's an exercise, in large measure, of cost shifting."