The Tea Act, approved by the British Parliament on May 10, 1773, actually placed no new tax on tea and was not designed to increase revenue.  It was intended to benefit the East India Company by giving them the exclusive right to sell tea in the colonies, creating a monopoly which the colonists perceived as another means of “taxation without representation”.
The British government used the East India Company as a tool to spread its influence in India but in the early 1770s it was at the edge of bankruptcy. Its …