What are the stamp act and the sugar act?

Answer 1

The sugar act was a law passed by the British Parliament in 1764 changing the tax on molasses imported by the colonists. The Sugar Act actually lowered the rate of the tax but increased the amount of tax collected because it added to the ability of customs officials to enforce the law, so that smuggling molasses into the colonies to avoid the tax (previously quite common) became both less profitable and more dangerous. The stamp act placed a tax on almost all printed material in the colonies - everything from newspapers and pamphlets to wills and playing cards.

What was most important about the sugar and stamp acts is that they were the first times Parliament had, without the approval of the colonial legislatures, imposed a tax on the colonies in order to raise revenue rather than as a means of regulating trade (as the previous tax on molasses had been). Many colonists thought this was unconstitutional; under the British Constitution, subjects could be taxed only by decision of their elected legislature, the House of Commons of Parliament. Since the colonists were not allowed to elect representatives to Parliament, they reasoned that only their colonial legislatures and not Parliament had the right to tax them.