The 1773 British law on tea that helped trigger the Boston Tea Party was called the Tea Act.
Parliament passed the Tea Act in May 1773. It allowed the financially troubled British East India Company to ship tea directly to the American colonies and sell it through appointed agents, reducing some costs while preserving the existing colonial tea duty.
Many colonists opposed the measure because they regarded the tea duty as an assertion of Parliament’s right to tax them without elected colonial representation. On December 16, 1773, protesters in Boston boarded ships and dumped tea into the harbor. The British government responded with the Coercive Acts, intensifying the crisis that led to the American Revolutionary War.