-Benjamin Franklin
You're probably not the same way, but you might find these University of Penn articles interesting as to how the ancients collected taxes. You'll probably be stunned to find out, as I was, that they had a similar tax rate as we do now. How do I know this?
Many times they paid in livestock so a straight conversion isn't realistic, but if you look at how they often had to work for 3 months for the state it's not much different than ours. We usually work anywhere from 1-5 months in taxes depending upon whether you want to include local taxes and what tax bracket you're in. The more things change the more they stay the same...
http://www.upenn.edu/almanac/v48/n28/AncientTaxes.html