A Tax Cut to Beat the Dutch

April 15 brought tax-related web sites into the spotlight. The Tax History Project at Tax Analysts, for example, where you can browse Form 1040s going back to 1913.

Thanks to historian Joseph J. Thorndike, you also can learn about the original Boston Tea Party, an event actually prompted by a tax cut.

Few proper or improper Bostonians were paying the British tea tax already imposed; they were drinking smuggled Dutch tea. So Parliament cut the tax in order to bolster sales of tea by the British East India Company. Being pushed around by a distant Parliament – plus the thought of the East India Company gaining a tea monopoly – is what irked the merchants of Boston.

It bears repeating that the colonists were not objecting to the financial burden of the tea tax. Or any other tax, for that matter. Instead, they were making a point about political legitimacy. They were more than willing to pay taxes imposed by their own representatives. But they were utterly unwilling to pay taxes imposed by Parliament -- a more or less alien power, given the lack of colonial representation.

Some members of today's Tea Party may share a similar feeling: Taxes are inevitable, at least at the local and state level, but must be minimized when paid to a distant federal government run by politicians, lobbyists and bureaucrats.

On the other hand, one of the first modern tea parties was held in 1999, right outside this blogger's window, to protest a state property tax. The levy, imposed to raise money for school districts in towns experiencing hard times, led to dissension between New Hampshire's "rich" and "poor" towns that continues to this day.