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United States of America emerged as an independent state between 1776 and 1789, and created and implemented its own constitution to establish a proper and new national government. American Patriots managed to gain control over all the colonies and declared war for independence and announced independence on July 4, 1776. The continuous tensions between colonists and the British authorities led to the American revolution. The Franco-Indian War which is also called the Seven Years' War (1756-1763), brought new areas under the control of the British Crown but this costly conflict created new unpopular taxes. The British government's attempts to generate income by taxing the colonies (especially the 1765 Stamp Act of 1765, the Tea Act of 1773 and the Townshend Acts of 1767) provoked strong protests among the colonists, who realized their lack of representation in Parliament and demanded the same rights as British governors had in the parliament ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"g9zeJhjY","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Passant)","plainCitation":"(Passant)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":250,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/bWNXhCgk/items/VGCUF96W"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/bWNXhCgk/items/VGCUF96W"],"itemData":{"id":250,"type":"article-journal","title":"Taxation and the American Revolution","container-title":"Australasian Accounting, Business and Finance Journal","page":"20-29","volume":"11","issue":"3","source":"DOI.org (Crossref)","abstract":"This article looks at the interrelationship between revolution and tax in the context of the American Revolution. It examines the role of ordinary people in demanding, among other things, as part of wider demands for democracy and equality, no taxation without representation.","DOI":"10.14453/aabfj.v11i3.3","ISSN":"18342000, 18342019","journalAbbreviation":"AABFJ","language":"en","author":[{"family":"Passant","given":"John"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2017"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Passant).
Their claim for independence was based on equal rights which they never had under the rule of British Nationalists. The war of independence would have never been possible without the help of France as France was the country that turned what had essentially been a civil war into an international conflict. It was the only country that helped America to go against the heavy taxation that was put on them by the colonists. This war for Independence is also called the American revolution as it made Great Britain’s thirteen colonies, to stand up for their rights and made them fight with the era’s biggest power, the British crown. The revolution continued for decades and did not formally end until 1783(The Concept of Representation in the Age of the American Revolution - John Phillip Reid - Google Books).
As an accounting student, I have a better understanding of accounting and taxation which was one of the important reasons why North-Americans became rebellious against British power. I have the knowledge of tax that was put on the people of the colonies that made their revolutionary vision clear. Justin M. Ross in his book has discussed taxation as the core reason of American revolution and says, “The Declaration of Independence cited the fact that King George had ‘imposed taxes om us without our consent’ as one of the revolution’s main causes”. However, to get a clear understanding of why the British government did this to the Americans colonies, one should take a step back to observe the governmental history of British because the Americans were not the first target for revenues from its wars and colonial expansion and colonial government. The first target of their attack was its people ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"EET6OOOI","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Reid)","plainCitation":"(Reid)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":261,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/bWNXhCgk/items/PJAS5P3C"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/bWNXhCgk/items/PJAS5P3C"],"itemData":{"id":261,"type":"book","title":"The concept of representation in the age of the American Revolution","publisher":"University of Chicago Press","publisher-place":"Chicago","source":"http://worldcat.org","archive":"/z-wcorg/","event-place":"Chicago","ISBN":"0-226-70898-5","language":"English","author":[{"family":"Reid","given":"John Phillip."}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["1989"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Reid). The two major components they targeted by taxing the Parliament’s landowners who were called squires by Miller and were more strongly taxed than they taxed the merchants. As it turned out to be insufficient in terms of income and caused potential rebellion and real anger on the part of powerful landowners ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"JUjSyfaa","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Einhorn)","plainCitation":"(Einhorn)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":253,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/bWNXhCgk/items/H4IGUX4J"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/bWNXhCgk/items/H4IGUX4J"],"itemData":{"id":253,"type":"book","title":"American Taxation, American Slavery","publisher":"University of Chicago Press","number-of-pages":"350","source":"Google Books","abstract":"For all the recent attention to the slaveholding of the founding fathers, we still know remarkably little about the influence of slavery on American politics. American Taxation, American Slavery tackles this problem in a new way. Rather than parsing the ideological pronouncements of charismatic slaveholders, it examines the concrete policy decisions that slaveholders and non-slaveholders made in the critical realm of taxation. The result is surprising—that the enduring power of antigovernment rhetoric in the United States stems from the nation’s history of slavery rather than its history of liberty. We are all familiar with the states’ rights arguments of proslavery politicians who wanted to keep the federal government weak and decentralized. But here Robin Einhorn shows the deep, broad, and continuous influence of slavery on this idea in American politics. From the earliest colonial times right up to the Civil War, slaveholding elites feared strong democratic government as a threat to the institution of slavery. American Taxation, American Slavery shows how their heated battles over taxation, the power to tax, and the distribution of tax burdens were rooted not in debates over personal liberty but rather in the rights of slaveholders to hold human beings as property. Along the way, Einhorn exposes the antidemocratic origins of the popular Jeffersonian rhetoric about weak government by showing that governments were actually more democratic—and stronger—where most people were free. A strikingly original look at the role of slavery in the making of the United States, American Taxation, American Slavery will prove essential to anyone interested in the history of American government and politics.","ISBN":"978-0-226-19488-2","note":"Google-Books-ID: 97qls5TNm_8C","language":"en","author":[{"family":"Einhorn","given":"Robin L."}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2008",5,15]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Einhorn). The British government started looting their own people and other and other working class. The new taxes that fell on both squires and working classes include window taxes, stamp duty and excise taxes cider, beer and wine.
The other new taxes on its citizens apart from stamp duties have not been as well accepted because they were related to other things like the basic alcoholic beverages of the workers and squires. Apart from tax on wine, cider and beverages of Large landowners, Pitt also imposed additional duty on beer during the Seven Years' War because according to the government the hardworking Londoners drank four litres of beer a day which ultimately projected increased revenues. These drinks taxes provoked real anger among both classes, the Landowners and the working classes across the country. The government had to take down the new taxes and withdrew them considering the protest that created much of a disturbance and tumult for the government. It was a lesson for the American colonies who understood the tricks of the British government when they tried to tax the overall consumption of colonialists.
The game was not over as the British Parliament did not stop this game of imposing high taxation on people and this time, they imposed a series of taxes on American colonies without their approval right after the rebellious attitude of their people against taxes.
These taxes were planned to reduce taxes on squires, to pay the cost of colonization, to pay for the Seven Years War and controlling trade for the benefit of British merchants. Thus in 1764, the British Parliament imposed a tax on crude sugar used in making rum, on molasses, on imports, on newspapers, legal documents, pamphlets and British library on its American colonies ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"BTcKK1A1","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Frecknall Hughes)","plainCitation":"(Frecknall Hughes)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":255,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/bWNXhCgk/items/JPTEMLZI"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/bWNXhCgk/items/JPTEMLZI"],"itemData":{"id":255,"type":"chapter","title":"The concept of taxation and the age of enlightenment","container-title":"Studies in the History of Tax Law","publisher":"Hart Publishing","publisher-place":"Oxford","page":"253-286","volume":"2","source":"oro.open.ac.uk","event-place":"Oxford","abstract":"The aim of this chapter is to examine how the concept of taxation, as we understand it today, developed from the mass of new ideas that came out of the era known as \"The Enlightenment\" (c.1688-1800). Such ideas influenced thinking about taxation in England into the nineteenth century particularly, and many remain with us today. The Enlightenment was an age that saw the American Revolution (1775-1783) and the French Revolution (1789), in both of which taxation played a significant part, and which events deeply effected the thinking of English writers of all kinds, whether political, legal, economic or philosophical. During these years the relationship between citizen and government was the particular focus of discussion by writers such as John Locke, David Hume, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine and Jeremy Bentham. There was also considerable cross-fertilisation of ideas between them and their European and American counterparts.\n\nThis chapter is a preliminary examination of the ideas of some of the English, Scottish and Irish writers of the Enlightenment period to reveal contemporary thinking about taxation, and to assess its relevance today, as taxation remains a topic firmly rooted at the heart of that citizen-government relationship.","URL":"http://www.hartpub.co.uk/books/details.asp?isbn=9781841136776","ISBN":"978-1-84113-677-6","author":[{"family":"Frecknall Hughes","given":"Jane"}],"editor":[{"family":"Tiley","given":"John"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2007"]]},"accessed":{"date-parts":[["2019",11,13]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Frecknall Hughes). These taxes provoked widespread anger and an uproar among American colonies against not only the British parliament but also against their rich American people. The stamp law produced a different class of rebellions who thought of the taxes no less than poison. Because a stamp without a document did not have legitimacy and position in the court.
It was a strategy of the British government to force its colonies to pay for the war that they fought against France. In simple words, they compelled them to pay their role in the expansion of the British empire through the implementation of heavy taxes.
It was this time when the colonies responded to the unacceptable game of taxation from 1767 to 1770 and went on protesting against British and rich Americans. They showed resistance by boycotting British goods and started doing things that led to building a revolution. The lower class and the poor Americans were the active protesters in this regard. The tax has been a reason for many great rebellions including the American revolution which not only involved the ruling class but also the ordinary people that include farmers and artisans. They could not accept this injustice hence brought one of the biggest revolutions of history.
Work cited
ADDIN ZOTERO_BIBL {"uncited":[],"omitted":[],"custom":[]} CSL_BIBLIOGRAPHY Einhorn, Robin L. American Taxation, American Slavery. University of Chicago Press, 2008.
Frecknall Hughes, Jane. “The Concept of Taxation and the Age of Enlightenment.” Studies in the History of Tax Law, edited by John Tiley, vol. 2, Hart Publishing, 2007, pp. 253–86. oro.open.ac.uk, http://www.hartpub.co.uk/books/details.asp?isbn=9781841136776.
Passant, John. “Taxation and the American Revolution.” Australasian Accounting, Business and Finance Journal, vol. 11, no. 3, 2017, pp. 20–29. DOI.org (Crossref), doi:10.14453/aabfj.v11i3.3.
Reid, John Phillip. The Concept of Representation in the Age of the American Revolution. University of Chicago Press, 1989. /z-wcorg/.
