The "Boston Tea Party"    " was not a protest against a tax"..."King George being a principal shareholder"

These statements--and some others on this thread--are so simplistic as to be misleading.

Various sectors of the North American population were annoyed at the situation for various reasons.

Some were still bitter at the Townshend Act taxes, of which the tea tax was the last remaining.

And the British East India Company was not an all-powerful monopoly. In fact it was in serious financial trouble, partly due to the fact that in many ways it was for all practical purposes a branch of the British government. As such it had among other things, led armed forces in India.   And it was in debt to the British government for 400,00 pounds per year, money the regime depended on.

The Americans had tried to find other sources of tea, among other things "Labrador tea". Mostly they had been smuggling " Dutch tea into the colonies to evade the tea duty" Barbara Tuchman, The March of Folly, p 193. This had reduced "sales of the East India Company in the North American colonies by almost 2/3."

The East India Company also did not have a monopoly to sell tea in the North American colonies until 1773. Up to that point, it was required to sell its tea only in London, with a sizable duty, which created the smuggling opportunity mentioned above.

Nor were the colonists all against the 1773 change. Among other people, Benjamin Franklin was one who suggested allowing the Company to export the tea directly to North America without paying the burdensome tax it was paying in London.   Up to then the the arrangement had been that British firms, not the Company itself, bought the tea and sold it in the colonies.

As a result of the 1773 change the British in Britain themselves in fact paid a far higher tax than the 3 pence Townshend tax paid in the colonies--and the British also regularly patronized smugglers.    Reason for this is that the change cut the tax the East
India Company paid for re-export but restored the taxes the British themselves paid which had been repealed in 1767.   So sales in Britain dropped sharply and the East India Co. had a huge surplus of unsaleable tea.

When the Tea Act passed Parliament American merchants--and smugglers-- were indeed outraged at the underselling the East India Company could do:    "Shipowners and builders, captains and crews whose livelihood was in smuggling also felt threatened" Tuchman p 195. The North government had been in fact warned against keeping the Townshend tea tax, but insisted on on it--it was in fact used to pay salaries of colonial officials.   This in itself was also controversial in the colonies, since that method of financing colonial administration would insulate Crown officials from colonial influence.   So, contrary to the assertions of some Mudcatters, the tax which remained was in fact a major issue.

But the "monopoly" argument was not just aimed at the British East India Company itself--which as noted above was in serious financial difficulties in the early 1770's-- but also at its role as an arm of the British government, and that government's continued insistence that it could tax the North Americans for revenue without their own representatives' participation.