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How Did The British Placed Taxes On The Colonies

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People may refer to taxes as a bad thing, but in the late eighteenth century, taxes were good, in a way. If it wasn’t for taxes and restrictions, America might not be as it is now. The British being short on money from fighting the Seven Years’ War with France and the Indian’s, so they wanted to raise money to pay off their enormous debt. They looked at the Colonies in America as a way of doing this. They started to impose taxes on the colonies to recuperate some of that lost money. The taxes they imposed on the Colonies are the Stamp Act, The Sugar Act, The Intolerable Act, and the Tea Act. At the time, these taxes were detrimental to the Colonies, so they fought back to the British Empire, and wrote the Declaration of Independence. This was the official document that started the split from British control and the …show more content…

They renewed the Act in 1764 with some provisions which was in their favor. At a quick glance at the tax, it looks like it would favor the Colonies because it went from six pence per gallon to three pence per gallon on molasses. But, before the law was rewritten, the Colonies were smuggling their molasses from the French West Indies to avoid paying the tax which made it cheaper than the products coming from Britain. Since the colonies were not paying the tax, the products from the French was much cheaper than the products from Britain. Along with the tax the British also mandated that the Navy enforcement the new tax and stop the illegal smuggling of sugar and molasses from the French. The British also made stricter punishments for people caught smuggling. The punishment being, once caught, you were not entitled to a trial by jury but from only a judge. This made the punishment for smuggling much stricter than before. This was done to motivate the people to stop smuggling and buy their products from the

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