As the gap between the superrich and everyone else grew during the first Gilded Age, support for progressive tax reform spread across the political spectrum and across the country. Progressive tax innovations began at the state level. “In the 1890s fifteen states instituted taxes on large inheritances; more than 40 states had inheritance taxes in place in the 1910s.”96 The first federal income tax (apart from a temporary tax to support the Civil War), as well as the first inheritance tax, were approved with bipartisan support in 1894.
