Legal history of income tax in the United States Legal history of income tax in the United States Taxation of income in the United States has been practised since colonial times. Some southern states imposed their own taxes on income from property, both before and after Independence. The Constitution empowered the federal government to raise taxes at a uniform rate throughout the nation, and required that "direct taxes" be imposed only in proportion to the Census population of each state. Federal income tax was first introduced under the Revenue Act of 1861 to help pay for the Civil War. It was renewed in later years and reformed in 1894
Working Party on the Reorganisation of the Income Tax Act 1976 Following on from these reports the government in 1995 established a review process for rewriting the income tax legislation, overseen by an advisory panel drawn from the private and public sectors. The Income Tax Act has since been largely rewritten in a plain English style with a radically re-organised structure, including a unique (for New Zealand) alpha-numeric section referencing system (as opposed to the more usual numeric system. It was re-enacted as the Income Tax Act 1994 and again as the Income Tax Act 2007 as the various parts of the legislation was progressively rewritten. The Rewrite Advisory Panel was