How heavily were the British taxing their American colonies?

The following point came from Edmund Burke. Look for his papers about the American revolution. He represented colonial governments in some ways, and had many dealings with them. He was pushing for a peaceful resolution, the war was very much against his wishes.

The traditional arrangement was: colonies don't pay taxes, but are subject to commerce monopoly. Thus, American colonies could only export and import to UK, and not to other nations.

First, it would be hard to tax the colonies. They are too far away, and even if the king could send a trusted tax collector, any dispute would take too long to solve if it involved communications with London.

Second, if the commerce is done with the UK, everything could be taxed in the UK side, much closer to the king.

So, the monopoly is a easier way to tax the colonies indirectly.

Then, in the colonist's mind, any tax was really too much, because they were still subject to the monopoly - Further, any tax was against the established custom.

I doubt any tax of this period is comparable with the amount of taxes we pay now.

The cash amounts of the taxes were not particularly high, but to the colonist's eyes this was besides the point. The success of the French and Indian war was enabled by a cooperation between the colonial governments and the British military. When a campaign was required, General Redcoat would go to a colonial legislature and say 'we need 500 men and their equipment, and supplies for 3 weeks. Or even "I need 10000 pounds to pay the regulars" Then the legislature would take care of the raising of the troops, supplies and funds. So the government and colonial government were partners in the enterprise of winning the war for the king.

Then after the war, the British Laws come in and cut out the colonial governments entirely, without even consulting them. By American colonial thinking, Parliament should have sent a message to the 13 colonies asking them to raise X dollars for this purpose. And after some negotiation, presumably they would do it. Parliament, having had nothing to do with the previous arrangement aside from benefiting from it, saw no need to elevate the status of colonial governments into a kind of partners in the Empire, decided to play hardball. The Colonial governments, not wanting to be demoted to bystanders, fought back with boycotts and later more extreme actions. And when push came to shove, the Colonies won independence. It all might have been avoided with some understanding on both sides of the ocean, but that's the breaks.

Britain taxed the American colonies to help pay for the French and Indian War. Together with the taxes, Britain placed restrictions on their colonists crossing the Appalachian Mountains (to pacify certain Indian allies like the Iroquois.

The colonies felt that they had done Britain a favor by fighting on the front lines. They felt that they should have been rewarded, with greater settlement rights in the newly conquered territories, and fewer trade restrictions.

Instead, the colonists felt that they were being "punished." Hence the cry of "no taxation without representation." The real issue was not one of taxation, but rather privilege, and ultimately of "equality" with Britain--through independence.

It is rather difficult to find an exact number for how much colonists paid in taxes

This article on PBS Newshour says:

the average British citizen who resided in Britain paid 26 shillings per year in taxes compared to only 1 shilling per year in New England

So as near as I can tell the answer is 1 Shilling per year. From what I can find online my best guess (and it is a guess) is that 1 shilling is worth about $340 today. see here

The costs To Great Britain are even harder to find.

The American Indian war cost the British £70,000,000 see here. That's £11,141,888,434.78 in today's money per this site.

Wikipedia says that in that time period there were 20 shilling a pound. The colonial population was about 2.5 million so that's about £125,000 in revenue from the colonies each year. That would take 560 years to pay of the war debt, ignoring interest and inflation and . . . well. . . revolution.

I couldn't find any info on the cost to administer the colonies but considering that the colonies were largely self governing, I'm guessing that the cost to Great Britain was minuscule compared to the war debt.

Of course we should consider that the British expected to keep a large military and naval force in the colonies. No doubt that expense would have been large.

More interesting information about taxes in America circa 1776

American Colonies (and to a larger extent, the British Crown) were primarily funded by tariffs and excise taxes. This means taxes primarily existed on imports of goods and services to the colonies, as well as on the sale of particular products. . . the average tariff worked out to about 10 percent of the value of imports, source

Sugar and Molasses Act (1733) taxed colonists at 6 pence a gallon.

Sugar Act reduced the rate of tax on molasses from six pence to three pence per gallon, but was more strictly enforced. source

Apparently the more stringent enforcement of the tax affected the colonial economysource:

The combined effect of the new duties was to sharply reduce the trade with Madeira, the Azores, the Canary Islands, and the French West Indies (Guadelupe, Martinique and Santo Domingo (now Haiti)), all important destination ports for lumber, flour, cheese, and assorted farm products. The situation disrupted the colonial economy by reducing the markets to which the colonies could sell, and the amount of currency available to them for the purchase of British manufactured goods.

Stamp Act Basically taxed anything printed on paper (and some odd things like dice or payments to employees) and was very long and complex The tax varied from selling land (two shillings), to an advertis*m*nt in a gazzet(newspaper), (two shillings), to a pack of playing cards (one shilling), or dice (ten shillings)

you can see the full list of all 54 taxed items here

The Townshend Acts imposed a tax on tea of four pence per pound which comes to about $8 in today's money. source

There was also the Currency Act which abolished the private bank notes (non-government backed money, or notes of promise) while not technically a tax this would have been a financial burden to the colonists. source

I Hope that helps!

Actual tax figures had less to do with the revolution than the lack of representation in British Parliament.

In short, many in those colonies believed the lack of direct representation in the distant British Parliament was an illegal denial of their rights as Englishmen, and therefore laws taxing the colonists (one of the types of laws that affects the majority of individuals directly), and other laws applying only to the colonies, were unconstitutional. However, during the time of the American Revolution, only one in twenty British citizens had representation in parliament, none of whom were part of the colonies.

...

The complaint was never officially over the amount of taxation (the taxes were quite low, though ubiquitous), but always on the political decision-making process by which taxes were decided in London, i.e. without representation for the colonists in British Parliament.

Source