Income tax By the 1860s, the progressive tax had become a grudgingly accepted element of the English fiscal system. The US federal government imposed the first personal income tax on August 5, 1861, to help pay for its war effort in the American Civil War - (3% of all incomes over US$800) (equivalent to $ in ). This tax was repealed and replaced by another income tax in 1862. It was only in 1894 that the first peacetime income tax was passed through the Wilson-Gorman tariff. The rate was 2% on income over $4000 (equivalent to $ in ), which meant fewer
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