Dragon
Senior Member
- Sep 16, 2011
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3) Contrary to popular belief on the right these days, the Tea Tax was actually a tax CUT, not an increase -- a cut for corrupt mercantile interests, increasing their profits at the expense of the little guys..
It had nothing to do with that, and almost everything to do with forcing the colonists to buy highly taxed tea, and to cement the right of the crown to tax the colonies in the first place.
Well, no. As you say yourself:
Duties on tea (charged in Britain) destined for North America "and foreign parts" would either be refunded on export or not imposed . . . the only reduction of tax was in Great Britain, not the colonies
Exactly. It was a tax cut for the rich, specifically in this case the East India Company.
and it was designed to force the colonists to purchase tea on which Townshend duties were paid...
No. All tea sold in the colonies without exception and regardless of the source was subject to Townsend duties. (Tea was the only part of the Townsend act that remained, incidentally, the other taxes having been repealed.) The tax cut applied to East India tea was to the benefit of the company as it competed with, among others, American merchant shipping. The tea tax was hardly onerous, and amounted to no more than a maintenance of the theoretical right of Parliament to tax Americans directly.
The protest carried out by S. Adams & co. was directed at a British government perceived (with much cause) as favoring the elite, especially the British nobility and chartered companies like East India Co., and not performing its duty to the common people. The parallels to today's circumstances are quite marked, although the details of course differ.