Can somebody explain exactly how one would owe taxes on Kickstarter? Let's say you get a bunch of money from Kickstarter by preselling a game. What you have is money but you will also have a liability (i.e., the obligation to provide the game). If your funding matches your budget, by the time you fulfill your liability, (i.e., you finish the game and send it off), you will have spent most of the money on development. You would not have significant profits.

So I do not see how you would owe a lot of taxes other than payroll taxes, or various incorporation taxes.