There are some people who think it was unfair and some who think it was fair that the British government put taxes on the American citizens.
The colonists deemed the taxes to be unfair. They had nobody to vouch for them in the British Parliament, so they had no say in what was happening. This is known as "taxation without representation." They preferred to be taxed by their colonial governments and disliked how Great Britain had stopped practicing salutary neglect and started taxing them.
Great Britain deemed the taxes to be fair. They had practiced salutary neglect for a while, leaving the colonists to do mostly everything by themselves, as long as they were making money for Britain. When the French and Indian War ended, it was very expensive and Great Britain needed a way to pay for it. They thought it was fair to tax the colonists because the war was fought on American soil, many Americans were involved in the war, and they were using their own troops in order to protect the colonists. Even after the war had ended, they were using their troops to protect the colonists from potential outsiders.
