By the time the Revolution broke out, taxes were only a minor part of the issue, though in a more general sense, money certainly played an important role.

The so-called "Intolerable Acts" were what really pushed the anti-British grumblings and skirmishes into all-out war. There were five acts passed by Parliament, four of them aimed at Massachusetts, and one at Virginia. They all, however, had implications for all the rest of the colonies as well, and had already affected some of them directly.

The Boston Port Act. This act closed the port of Boston until Massachusetts paid back the money Parliament felt the colony owed for the Boston Tea Party. The Boston Tea Party had been carried out by a group of anti-Royal individuals (the "Sons of Liberty"), but the Parliamentary response had implications for everyone in Massachusetts. Not only was the merchant class going to be out of all the money they'd make from importing and exporting goods, but anybody in Boston who worked on the docks, or depended on the port traffic to make their living, was having their livelihood taken away from them. And anything you needed to buy that had to be imported, or any crops/commodities that the farmer class had raised that were meant to be sold to the other colonies, or overseas, was under severe threat due to the Act. All these people were suffering consequences for a much smaller group of individuals. And since the people of Massachusetts largely supported the Boston Tea Party, the sentiment was that Parliament was in the wrong for punishing everyone.

This also has implications for all the other colonies as well. While their ports weren't closed, all the major ports had engaged in a protest against the Tea Act, just not to the extent as had happened in Boston. If the Boston port could be closed over political disagreements, their colony's port could be next.

The Massachusetts Government Act. This act dissolved the elected government of Massachusetts, and put the colony under direct rule of Parliament, all the way down to the town level. Parliament would now appoint the legislature (the Massachusetts General Court) and now had control over who ran the city councils, and who were the road overseers, and the local tax assessors, the magistrate judges, the town constables, and so on. While offices at the colony-wide level were mostly held by the upperclass, at the town level, there were a lot of middle-class people who came from farm families who held many of these offices. So there was a direct threat to moderate and Patriot-leaning government officials. They were going to be replaced with Royalists, affecting the impartiality of government right down to the local level. And since this was all carried out by martial law, Massachusetts was being patrolled by British soldiers, so, anybody who didn't like it, could be facing the butt end of a gun, and not have any recourse through the local or colonial government should the soldiers overstep their bounds...as had happened recently, in the eyes of the Massachusetts citizenry, at the Boston Massacre.

The Administration of Justice Act. This act made it so that any British soldier accused of a crime committed in Massachusetts would not be tried in Massachusetts, but would be taken back to Britain for trial. Further, under some laws, citizens of Massachusetts could also be subject to a trial back in Britain and not in Massachusetts. This was seen as a slap in the face of Massachusetts after the Boston Massacre, and illegal under the Massachusetts colonial charter. The soldiers who had opened fire had been given a trial in Massachusetts, which the people thought was the correct and legal venue for the trial--the alleged crimes had been committed in Massachusetts and Massachusetts had its own court system and had no access to the British court system. Further, they thought the trial had been fair. After all, six of the soldiers had been acquitted, despite the popular sentiment being that they were guilty, and the other two had got off without prison sentences. But the crown didn't seem to care to take their chances anymore, and had unilaterally decided that their courts should be the venue for any British citizen for any crimes committed in Massachusetts--and even for Massachusetts citizens in some cases. Once again, this had major implications for any Massachusetts citizens who crossed the Parliament-appointed government the wrong way. Or, worse, found themselves in the crosshairs of the British soldiers keeping the peace.

The Quartering Act. With all the soldiers in Massachusetts, the British government needed a place to put them, so to do it on the cheap, they required Massachusetts citizens to house and feed soldiers upon the request of the government. This was a major imposition on families, particularly in Boston, not only financially, but politically, if they happened not to agree with that law or not be Loyalists in general. It made a social imposition, too: most of these soldiers were young men far from home, and spent much of their downtime getting drunk or frequenting the local brothel. This Act directly led to the Third Amendment in the U.S. Constitution.

The Quebec Act. This act gave the "Ohio Country" (i.e. the unorganized Midwestern territory) to the province of Quebec, and took it away from the colony of Virginia. The Virginia colonial charter had given this territory to Virginia, and Virginia had started the French and Indian War for the direct purpose of gaining control of the area from the French, who also claimed the land. Further, at the end of the French and Indian War, the British government had entered a peace treaty with an alliance of Indian nations in which the British agreed not to settle the land west of the Appalachians. So even though the British had won the French and Indian War, Virginia still lost what they were fighting for. A lot of wealthy Virginians had been investors in the Ohio Company, who had a royal charter allowing them to survey the land and sell it off. So this had a direct financial effect on the Virginia elite. But not only them, it had a direct effect on the farmer and lower classes of Virginia and the other colonies as well. If that land were open to settlement, the frontier land would be sold on the cheap. Most of the best farmland back east was already occupied, so the land that went up for sale was getting more expensive, and since everybody had ten kids back then, the sons of current farmers were the ones who bore the brunt of that extra expense. The promise of opening the frontier had been going on for about 25 years, and the only thing standing in the way was the British government.

And while it didn't particularly matter who controlled the Ohio Country as long as it was closed from settlement, Parliament did this as a warning shot to the other colonies. As in Massachusetts, the British had dissolved the Quebec government, so by giving Quebec this land, it was an effort to placate them--and then they also opened up the right to hold government office to Catholics, another right the Quebecois were fighting for. Parliament wanted to show the other colonies that if you played ball like Quebec, you'd be rewarded, but if you fought like Massachusetts, you'd be punished. And in so doing, they punished the citizens of Virginia, and any other American who might be interested in cheap frontier land.

So these laws all had direct implications on the citizens of Massachusetts, and of Virginia. The Intolerable Acts had financial, social, and legal consequences on the average citizen, really through no fault of their own. Parliament was trying to stir the pot and pit the citizenry against the Sons of Liberty and the anti-royal radicals of the Massachusetts legislature, but instead, it united most of Massachusetts against Parliament.

Thus, the philosophical arguments were easy ones to make: the British crown was stepping on Massachusetts citizens' rights to self-determination by dissolving their government unilaterally (which Parliament had no right to do, if you trace the roots of the Massachusetts colonial charter back to the Mayflower Compact, which the King was not a party to), and thus had soldiers shooting at citizens and sleeping in their houses while not being subject to local law. The Massachusetts charter had also given the local legislature the sole right to levy taxes on the citizens of Massachusetts, and Parliament could not do it unilaterally, and that right had been taken away as well once the Masschusetts government was dissolved and replaced by Parliamentary control. Similarly, in Virginia, the colonial charter gave the colony control of the Ohio Country, and Virginians and other colonists would have jumped at the chance to get that cheap, fertile land for themselves or for their kids, but Parliament had violated that contract unilaterally. And the colonists had no real legal way to fight any of this, aside from writing angry letters to Parliament or to the King and hope they'd have a change of heart.

Thus, Massachusetts and Virginia became the hotbeds for the revolutionary sentiment. They had philosophical arguments to make because those arguments had spilled out into real-life consequences. And while they had not directly affected the other colonies yet, a lot of the other colonial citizens saw this as just a matter of time before some political disagreement with Parliament would see them suffer similar real-life consequences. After all, some of these things had happened before--Parliament had unilaterally dissolved the governments of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Rhode Island in the past, as just one example. Still, because these acts didn't directly affect the Middle Colonies, it came to pass that the Middle Colonies had a much more Loyalist bent than the other colonies did.

(...cont'd...)