The government will get a $150 to $250 million payday from Prince's estate

[Igel]

33. The term "death tax" is widely taken

left of center to come from the GOP because it was discussed as such in the '00s.

The term's been around for at least a decade before the GOP started to use it and before those left of center decided that the GOP must have coined it.

It was used in the tax planning industry, right and left, in the '90s and "we" didn't bother to notice it until it became used by our domestic foes. First attestation is more important than first notice by a subgroup. It was certainly used by opponents.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2010/12/16/132031116/a-history-of-how-we-got-from-estate-tax-to-death-tax says that it was used (first?) in the 1940s by opponents. I suspect it was lurking in unwritten language for a while before first attestation (that's typically how things work).

The wiki article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estate_tax_in_the_United_States#The_term_.22death_tax.22 says that the language or similar language actually appeared in the legislation in the '50s and carried into at least the '80s.

Of course, Lakoff finds that it's a neologism used in framing in the recent past. That's Lakoff, making a certain species of linguistic thought serve a higher, or at least a political, end. Advocacy research sux.

As an aside, Prince was clearly in the 1%, and those who say that behind every great fortune there's a great crime either must really dislike his music or fall silent before the self-serving inaccuracy of their quote.