The concept of inheritance tax, specifically the vicesima hereditatum, was introduced by the Romans under Emperor Augustus, making them one of the first to implement such a tax. I checked this out because Boadicea complains about it.

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…Hence, although, before, some among you may,

Through ignorance of what was best for you, have been deceived

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By the perfidious pledges of Rome, yet now that you have tried

Both freedom and servitude, grant me how great a mistake you made

In choosing an imported dictatorship over your ancestral way of life,

For you have now come to realize how much better is poverty

With no master to wealth within the shameful bonds of slavery.

For what treatment is there of the most grievous sort that we

Have not suffered ever since these monsters came to Britain?

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Have we not been robbed of most of our property,

And that the most precious, while for what is left we pay taxes,

Besides pasturing and tilling for them all remaining land?

Do we not pay a yearly tribute for our very bodies?

How much better it would be to have been sold to masters

Once and for all, than, while clinging to mere titles of nobility,

To have to ransom ourselves every year! How much better

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To have been attacked and finished off than to go about

Weighed down by taxes! And yet, why do I mention death?

For even dying is not free of cost with them; no, you know

What duties we deposit for our dead. Death should be no tythe.

Death frees even those who toil in slavery to others;

Only in the case of these Romans do the very dead remain alive

For their profit…

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From The Runiad, book 21 – epic poem completed earlier this year.

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