HISTORY OF TAXATION
Political authority has been used to raise capital throughout history. In many pre-monetary societies, such as the Incan empire, taxes were owed in labor. Taxation in labor was the basis of the Feudal system in medieval Europe.
In more sophisticated economies such as the Roman Empire, tax farming developed, as the central powers could not practically enforce their tax policy across a wide realm. The tax farmers were obligated to raise large sums for the government, but were allowed to keep whatever else they raised.
Many Christians have understood the New Testament to support the payment of taxes, through Jesus's words "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's".
There were certain times in the Middle Ages where the governments did not explicitly tax, since they were self-supporting, owning their own land and creating their own products. The appearance of doing without taxes was however illusory, since the government's (usually the Crown's) independent income sources depended on labor enforced under the feudal system, which is a tax exacted in kind.
Many taxes were originally introduced to fund wars and are still in place today, such as those raised by the American government during the American Civil War (1861-1865). Income tax was first introduced into Britain in 1798 to pay for weapons and equipment in preparation for the Napoleonic wars and into Canada in 1917 as a "temporary" tax under the Income War Tax Act to cover government expenses resulting from World War I.
The current income tax in America was set up by Theodore Roosevelt in 1913. It was called The Federal Income Tax and was deducted from incomes at rates varying from 1-7%. But, since then, the American Tax Code has been modified and new taxes have been added, especially over the World War I and II periods. Since World War II, the American Tax Code has increased in size four-fold.