So my tax bill for April is starting to come together and it's looking pretty bad. I've been paying estimated taxes all year but we had a particularly good year this year and since many of our projects run under S-corporations, their profits get tied to my personal return (like most small business owners).
Our company has around 70 people in it. We'd have more but we literally can't fit anyone else in the building. We're in the process of building out other parts of the building we own but of course, that requires a lot of money.
Some of these projects will have to be put off until mid next year or later depending on how well Demigod, Sins of a Solar Empire: Entrenchment, Object Desktop 2009, and ironically, how well our partner Dell does (buy Dell computers! 
).
The reason they have to be put off is not that we don't have the capital to build out more of the building and hire more people, we do. It's that that money is going to go to the government instead in the form of income taxes -- almost $2 million of it in fact.
Now obviously, the government needs money to pay for vital services. I don't begrudge paying taxes on principle. But too often, people forget where government money ultimately comes from. Worse, they are totally unaware of the consequences of taxation.
Taxes should always be kept as low as humanly possible because when you tax, you are literally taking from the people who are the most productive with capital and often giving it to the least.
Stardock, for instance, is based in the Detroit area of Michigan. So there is a certain sense of irony that the $2 million the government is taking from us is going to be given to the Auto companies and other companies have have absolutely demonstrated that they are terrible with capital. Heck, our $2 million probably was used up in the hearings leading up to the vote on the bail out for the auto industry which Bush ultimately and unwisely decided to ignore.
So instead of using that $2 million to hire workers to build out another 8000 square feet so that we can hire an additional 24 more people this next year (to open more development teams to work on more projects for OEMs, gamers, and general consumers) we'll have to wait until we make enough money from the sales of our projects next year. Way to go government...