where did the idea of taxation and representatives come from
No taxation without representation The English Parliament had controlled colonial trade and taxed imports and exports since 1660.[4] By the 1760s, the Americans were being deprived of a historic right.[5] The English Bill of Rights 1689 had forbidden the imposition of taxes without the consent of Parliament. Since the colonists had no representation in Parliament, the taxes violated the guaranteed Rights of Englishmen. Parliament initially contended that the colonists had virtual representation, but the idea "found little support on either side of the Atlantic".[6] John Dunmore Lang wrote in 1852, "The person who first suggested the idea [of Parliamentary representation for the colonies] appears to have been Oldmixon, an American annalist of the era of Queen Anne or George I. It was afterwards put forward with approbation by the celebrated Dr. Adam Smith, and advocated for a time, but afterwards rejected and strongly opposed, by Dr. Benjamin Franklin."[7]
History of taxation in the United Kingdom When the United Kingdom of Great Britain came into being on May 1, 1707, the window tax, which had been introduced across England and Wales under the Act of Making Good the Deficiency of the Clipped Money in 1696,[4] continued. It had been designed to impose tax relative to the prosperity of the taxpayer, but without the controversy that then surrounded the idea of income tax. At that time, many people opposed income tax on principle because they believed that the disclosure of personal income represented an unacceptable governmental intrusion into private matters, and a potential threat to personal liberty.[5] In fact the first permanent British income tax was not introduced until 1842, and the issue remained intensely controversial well into the 20th century.[6]