The Stamp Act 1765

[Engineer shooting]

The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution
by Edmund S. Morgan

The highest tax, £10, was placed ... on attorney licenses. Other papers relating to court proceedings were taxed in amounts varying from 3d. to 10s. Land grants under a hundred acres were taxed 1s. 6d., between 100 and 200 acres 2s., and from 200 to 320 acres 2s. 6d., with an additional 2s 6d. for every additional 320 acres (1.3 km2). Cards were taxed a shilling a pack, dice ten shillings, and newspapers and pamphlets at the rate of a penny for a single sheet and a shilling for every sheet in pamphlets or papers totaling more than one sheet and fewer than six sheets in octavo, fewer than twelve in quarto, or fewer than twenty in folio (in other words, the tax on pamphlets grew in proportion to their size but ceased altogether if they became large enough to qualify as a book).

Cards were taxed a shilling a pack, this would be equal to $54 in today's money.

The high taxes on lawyers and college students were designed to limit the growth of a professional class in the colonies. The stamps had to be purchased with hard currency, which was scarce, rather than the more plentiful colonial paper currency.