Perhaps the better question is "what has changed that could make it workable now?". For example, in an interconnected world like today's, some countries actually do have massive power. Take the anti-corruption laws that say a multinational corporation can face stiff penalties at home for corruption that happens abroad - AFAIK, while not perfect, they're not ineffective either.

If, say, US would pass laws that allow them to tax everything that touches/ does business with a wealthy individual - that would make it very hard for said individual to avoid taxes (relocation to other countries doesn't help, and avoiding any business with US is impractical). I mean - what I present here is certainly not a "workable idea", but the gist of it should be that "because it was impossible in the past, it's not necessarily impossible in the future".

Not sure how you'd define "sustained", but the introduction of inheritance tax in the UK very effectively clobbered most of the surviving minor feudal landowners. Although that was also the period of massive social change and the world wars.