Death duties

According to Wikibooks: 'In the United Kingdom, Death Duty was first introduced as a tax on estates in England and Wales over a certain value from 1796, then called legacy, succession and estate duties. The value changed over time and the scope of estate duty was extended. By 1857 estates worth over £20 were taxable but duty was rarely collected on estates valued under £1500. Death duties were introduced in 1894, and for the next century were effective in breaking up large estates' - an effectiveness one might question given the post at reference 1. This prompted by my continuing to read the book about emperors noticed at reference 2.

It seems that the Romans had death duties too, all those centuries ago, but levied them in a rather different way. The prose is sometimes a bit dense and I would not pretend to have got to the bottom of the matter, but it seems that the Imperial Purse did very well out of bequests and confiscations. At times, an important part of its revenues.

The former worked by more or less forcefully suggesting to the rich that they could do worse than to leave all or part of their estates to the emperor.

The latter worked by confiscating the estates of all kinds of convicted criminals (with the emperor being in charge of the definition of same) and the estates of all those who failed to leave wills or who left wills which were ruled invalid for one reason or another (emperor in charge again). Perhaps a rich man was trying to leave money to his young wife, married in contravention of some marriage law or other. At present, this all has a rather capricious and arbitrary appearance, and must have made the emperor very unpopular among the upper classes. The lower classes and the army might have thought it was great.

Given the classical education of our upper classes, and hence of the founding fathers, perhaps one of the drivers for the separation of powers built into the US constitution.

I am also reminded of our own medieval kings, who made quite a good thing out of being the wards of rich orphans. And for all I know, there may well have been Roman-style abuse of the law of treason, given that the titles and estates of all those convicted of treason were forfeit to the Crown. And Richard II did confiscate the (extensive) estates, if not the titles, of Henry Bolingbroke, later Henry IV.

Reference 1: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/04/toffs-old-and-new.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/04/records-old-and-new.html.