Equal Protection and Race........................................................................................................ 1839. Overview..............................................................................................................................
Sugar cane plantations in the colonies of the West Indies. The older Sugar and Molasses tax charged the customer a duty of 6 pence per gallon of molasses. The bribe to customs officials per gallon of smuggled molasses was 1.5p. The new Sugar Act lowered the duty to 3p per gallon.
The Sugar Act actually lowered the rate of the tax but â¦ 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.