Every business is different depending how you file( sole p., s corp, llc). In my field particularly you have to change to grow. I added different services, which meant I needed to hire a more employees and added different technology to my practice.

Even though my overhead went up it does not justify myself making the same (my take home) as the year before.

Each quarter there is a B&O tax, L&I tax, 941 federal tax and UI tax.
As you can imagine, the more you make(Gross) the more you are taxed. You are not only taxed more because of added employees and gross income, but because it is a different year and taxes for small business (especially B&O tax) has gone up yearly.

I went back and looked at some numbers. My major change was adding 1 employee, going from 2 to 3. My payroll doubled due to increase business but my payroll taxes more than trippled and my Annual tax return did about the same. All the money I saved for the year to put back into the business went towards the 4th quarter and annual taxes putting me back at square one.

I realize that there are things I could probably due (legally) to help decrease my overall tax, but that is small business you learn and change or go bankrupt.

I hope this answered at least part of your question.