Tea Emperor

Roy Moxham wrote about different ways that British King’s used to benefit from the tea trade. The original method wasn’t very successful and was short-lived. For some reason first attempt to tax took place on the retail counter of coffee houses. There was a 3 pence tax for every gallon of sold tea. Now you can imagine what kind of tea that was. It is quite much likely that by pouring boiling water over old pair of used socks one would have been able to make better tea that was offer in London coffee houses between 1660 – 1690.

WHY TEA TAX PER GALLON OF READY TEA MEANT APPALLING TEA?

This is quite simple matter, really. There was no standard given for how tea should taste. This lead into a situation where coffee house keeper was trying to make the most money per used pound of tea leaves. In practice, every coffee house diluted the offered tea to a degree that the taste was close to water and at that time water wasn’t too clean.

TAX ON TEA LEAVES

Now this was a better idea. There was less problems with the quality and there was an added benefit with collecting the tax. It is difficult to keep up with tens of different sales locations without the aid of computers. It is much easier to collect the tax early in the production chain like for example an importer’s premises, custom houses or wholesale locations. This method of taxing tea finally caught wind into sails and the rest is also history.