Earned Income Tax Credit | A History of Taxation Practices, Chapter Eight: Tax Law and The Boston Tea Party

A History of Taxation Practices, Chapter Eight: Tax Law and The Boston Tea Party

Raleigh NC Tax Preparation

W. Marc Gilfillan, CPA, NC, individual and business CPA and Tax expert, shares about the history of taxes…

Ah…. now we have a historical event clearly concerning oppressive taxation. Was the Boston Tea Party a protest against the British tax on tea, as we were all taught? No, not one bit. The colonies had already been boycotting English tea for five years before to the Boston Tea Party! They had actually smuggled in Dutch tea and were quite prosperous. There was tea for all and no British tea tax paid. Naturally, the British did not like this boycott. So, the British forgot the duties back home. The Parliament told British tea sellers to disregard the import tax of shipping the tea into England and then pass the savings along to the colonies when they sent the tea over and thereby sold British tea at a price lower than the Dutch smuggled tea. If you’re feeling the pressure with today’s taxes, call a CPA for Tax Preparation in Raleigh, NC for all your tax-related needs!

But what people would sell this British tea?

They sold it with the loyal British merchants in the colonies. But would the colonists buy the cheaper British tea even though it had a tax? Yes. So much so that the result was loyal British merchants were getting all the business and the taxes were still being given to England. However, the colonists did not care about the tax very much; they still were getting more inexpensive tea. BUT, the non-British MERCHANTS didn’t like the process. The British merchants, with the help from England, had essentially established a monopoly on tea sales. The colonial merchants feared it was only a matter of time before additional British enterprises would be established with the same mechanism and they would be forced out of business. Go here if you want help with a modern-day Tax Return in Raleigh, NC.

So, a group of MERCHANTS who appeared to be Natives, walked on a vessel loaded with British tea and dumped it into the water. Was this a shining peak in American tax protest? No, it wasn’t. The Boston Tea Party was viewed as the senseless destruction of private property at a time when private property was highly regarded. The Boston Tea Party was extremely looked down upon and didn’t sit well with the colonies. Ben Franklin was shocked and demanded that full repayment would be paid immediately to the owners of the tea. However, it escalated into war.

However, the colonies would soon find that fleets of war vessels, battalions of soldiers, and cannons were much more terrifying than a few tax collectors. The ironic thing is, America won the war, mostly because England found it too expensive to fund war so far from home. BUT after the war, America had astounding debts and taxes, and even with representation they were enormous.

Keep an eye out for W. Marc Gilfillan’s next chapter in his History of Taxes series: Taxes and Slavery and the Civil War.

http://www.marccpa.com/

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