There aren't many sovereign nations that have been in existence since 1017 AD, so that sort of makes your question moot.
The Code of Hammurabi describes Babylonian taxes and the manners of levy. The Egyptians and Romans levied income taxes. There is of course the gafol/Danegeld/heregald of the Anglo-Saxons. You've got taxes/tolls paid by merchants on the Silk Road and certainly I've read of taxation in Ashoka's era and other sub-continental sovereignties.
You have the taxation/feudal levy system that existed even in archaic Greece where boats, rowers and soldiers were expected to be provided by patricians in times of war.
China (especially) and Japan have long histories of taxation.
The idea that recorded human history has been mostly without tax seems to be ahistoric.
>There aren't many sovereign nations that have been in existence since 1017 AD, so that sort of makes your question moot.
Sure. Which is why it's a bit ridiculous to say there has been a millennia of income tax we have been learning from.
Tax in general has existed - progressive income taxes, however, seem to be a fairly recent development. Purely in the administration sense, it would have been far more difficult to do in the past and as a progressive tax system does not actively benefit the people in power in a feudal or imperial government, it would be unlikely for a progressive tax to be implemented, especially one that exists in peace-time. In fact, feudal era taxes seem to have been actively regressive.
Removing a progressive tax system, something I believe is a bad idea to do, wouldn't roll things back to older systems of taxation. We wouldn't sacrifice the development of financial policies and tax frameworks, and we didn't arrive at the concept of a progressive system because of hundreds of years of failed tax policies. We have a structurally different government than countries did for hundreds of years prior.
The first "bank" was also founded much earlier than 1000 years ago (and wasn't a bank), but we did know a bit about financial systems even before then.
You replied in a discussion of income tax to a person talking about the history of income tax. Your objection appeared to be that the person you replied to was talking about US income tax history and your millennia of progressive income tax talk covered other countries.
