Timeline of Revenue Acts

  • Molasses Act

    Molasses Act
    -The Molasses Act is a British law that imposed a tax on molasses, sugar, and rum imported from non-British foreign colonies into the North American colonies.
    -The colonists protested the act saying that the British West Indies alone could not produce enough molasses to meet the colonies' needs.
    -It was one of the least effective acts because Americans kept smuggling it in and it was hard to enforce it.
  • Sugar Act

    Sugar Act
    -The Act set a tax on sugar and molasses imported into the colonies which impacted the manufacture of rum in New England.
    -Parliament, desiring revenue from its North American colonies, passed the first law specifically aimed at raising colonial money for the Crown. The sugar act increased duties on non-British goods shipped to the colonies.
    - The British thought
  • Stamp Act

    Stamp Act
    -The act required the colonists to pay a tax, represented by a stamp, on various forms of papers, documents, and playing cards.
    -The colonies hated Parliament's first direct tax on the American colonies.
    -Most of the British thought it was fine since they also paid it, but some merchants wanted it repealed for economic reasons.
  • Quartering Act

    Quartering Act
    -Required the American colonies to provide quarters (lodging) to British forces stationed in their towns or villages.
    - the American colonists were enraged that they had to house the armies that did't even want there
    -The army was like OK and set up camp in Boston anywhere they liked
  • Townshend Revenue Acts

    Townshend Revenue Acts
    -Duties aimed not merely at regulating trade but at putting money into the British treasury.
    --Many colonists resented what they perceived as an effort to tax them without representation and thus to deprive them of their liberty.
    - they considered all the duties bad for trade and, thus, expensive for the British empire.