The Tea Act was the British act passed in 1773 that maintained the tea tax imported into the American colonies.
Parliament passed the Tea Act on May 10, 1773, mainly to rescue the financially troubled British East India Company. The law allowed the company to ship tea directly to the colonies and sell it through appointed agents, reducing costs and undercutting colonial merchants and smugglers.
The act did not create the original tea duty: that tax came from the Townshend Acts of 1767, most of which Parliament repealed in 1770. The Tea Act kept the three-pence-per-pound duty on tea entering the colonies. Colonists objected because buying the cheaper tea could be seen as accepting Parliament’s authority to tax them without colonial representation.
Resistance culminated in the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773, when protesters dumped East India Company tea into Boston Harbor. Britain responded with the Coercive Acts, escalating the conflict that led to war.