Of Coffee / Tea and Taxes

The hubby has been playing the Beatle's Taxman all day today.  I suppose he feels free and joyous because his taxes are done, stamped, sealed and mailed, but it's getting annoying.  I, on the other hand, am the worst of procrastinators  ... well, hey, I'm busy!  I'm doing important research about tea, coffee and taxes.

The first item, of course, is the Boston Tea Party, in which taxes on tea brought things to a head in the American colonies.  The details were pretty sketchy in my memory, but thankfully I found these tidbits on the web:  150-200 colonists dressed as indians, December 16, 1773.  In protest of unfair taxation laws on tea, the patriots dumped all the tea cargo of the East India Company into the harbor. 

Here's an interesting first-hand account by George Hewes, a member of the band of "Indians".  And here you can read A Lady's Adieu to Her Tea Table, written, I assume, by a lady patriot who chose liberty over tea.  This same site also says that many colonists at that time switched to coffee or replaced tea with infusions of local herbs, berries, or with contraband tea imported mostly by Dutch merchants.  Good old Dutch.

Second is a tidbit from Hawaii's coffee history, from coffeetimes.com:

...in order to encourage coffee production in 1842, the Kingdom of Hawaii enacted a law allowing payment of land taxes with coffee (as well as with pigs!), and imposed a 3% duty on all foreign coffee imported into Hawaii.  The tax provision succeeded in encouraging small coffee plots all around the Big Island, Maui, Oahu and Kauai. Descendants of the Kauai plantings can still be seen on portions of the Kalalau Trail on Kauai's Napali Coast

I'd like to be able to pay my taxes with coffee right about now.

Lastly is another annoying item the hubby pointed out: The "Taxes" Coffee Mug.  The cup reads: Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.  Yeah, yeah. 

cause I'm the tax-man, ye-ah, I'm the tax-man...

I think I'll go break his cd player now.