Part of the summary: The way land tax was designed resulted in a limited focus on results. This created a tax system that was largely ineffective; it was too n

Part of the summary: The way land tax was designed resulted in a limited focus on results. This created a tax system that was largely ineffective; it was too narrow to work as either a revenue or social policy tool and for decades persisted without any obvious purpose. Attempts to revitalise it in the 1980s had some success but did not fix most of its underlying problems. Ultimately land tax was abolished in 1990; not for ideological or functional reasons but because it, and the Fourth Labour Government, were unpopular, an election was imminent and abolition was seen as a way to reduce the chance of the government losing.