effect from 31 March 1992 abolished New Zealand's land tax, a land tax was the very first direct tax ever imposed on New Zealanders, by the Land Tax Act (1878). A property tax followed the next year (per the Property Tax Act 1879). When first enacted, this charged a rate of one penny in the pound (i.e. 1/240th or 0.4%), but a massive £500 exemption applied, exempting most people from tax liability. The land tax initially provided a major proportion of government revenue. In 1895 it made up 76% of the total land and income tax revenue received by the government. In 1960 land tax contributed 6% of direct tax revenues, and by 1967, in a report recommending the abolition of land taxes, a committee chaired by Auckland accountant Lewis Ross noted that a mere 0.5% of total government revenue now came from land taxes. The government did not act on the Ross recommendation to abolish land taxes. By 1982 only 5% of total land value was taxed, and land taxes were also thought to be duplicative due to their similarity to local-authority property-rate levies, with property taxes (rates) making up 57% of local-government income by 2001. The Labour government elected in 1984 moved away from taxes on capital in all forms, and in 1990 Parliament passed the Land Tax Abolition Act (1990), ending New Zealand's history of central government taxing land. Later LVT discussions produced no change. See also Tax Working Group Absentee Tax, historical References