The recent wide-ranging New Zealand tax reforms have left untouched the area of welath taxation. Yet there is an urgent need to overhaul the estate and gift taxes which are illogical, unintegrated, widely avoided and bring in very little revenue. This report highlights the deficiencies of these taxes. Drawing on the experience of other countries, the author proposes ways in which they might be reformed to make them fairer and (if desired) more effective in checking inequalitities in the distribution of wealth which has almost certainly become more uneven in recent years. The report also suggests that there is a case worth considering for a modest annual wealth tax. Whilst reformed death duties and an annual wealth tax could not be expected to be major revenue yielders, a modest increase in revenue could be made available to lower income tax further, to finance desirable social expenditure or to reduce public sector borrowing. Taxing Wealth in New Zealand was commissioned by the Institute of Policy Studies as part of its research programme on taxation.