The origins of the term are somewhat obscure, but it is first noted in historical records in the 16th century, when Henry VIII besieged Pope Clement VII with around eighty or so petitions for the annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.

A photo of the petitions from Cardinal Wolsey and others, now stored in the Vatican archives, can be seen on page 106 of "Saints and Sinners, a History of The Popes", by Eamon Duffy (published by Yale University Press in 1997).

The pile of documents can be viewed in all their glory, rolled and stacked in original condition, each one sealed and bound with the obligatory red tape, as was the custom.

The tradition continued through to the 17th and 18th century. Although Charles Dickens is believed to have used the phrase before Thomas Carlyle, the English practice of binding documents and official papers with red tape was popularised in the writings of Carlyle protesting against official inertia with expressions like "Little other than a red tape Talking-machine, and unhappy Bag of Parliamentary Eloquence".

To this day, most barristers' briefs are tied in a pink-coloured ribbon known as "pink tape" or "legal tape". Government briefs are usually bound with white tape, introduced as an economy measure to save the expense of dyeing the tape red. Traditionally, official Vatican documents were also bound in red cloth tape.

All American Civil War veterans' records were bound in red tape, and the difficulty in accessing them led to the current use of the term, but there is evidence (as detailed above) that the term was in use in its modern sense sometime before this.

Although grief over red tape is often seen as a right-wing conviction,[citation needed] Karl Marx wrote about the phenomenon of changing from one person in control of a complete task, to having multiple people each with specialties in specific tasks.

He saw this occurring as society shifts from a Seigneurial system to a capitalist system. Although Marx drew different conclusions about this trend, it is often this abstraction among workers that is the source of red tape. This interpretation would explain why it is often perceived that the presence of red tape is increasing.