in a way i like the system in china. they simply force you to use their software to print invoices or receipts on government supplied numbered invoice paper, which automatically reports every sale. if there is no sale you don't need to do anything, because it's practically not possible to make a sale without printing a receipt and have it reported.

for end consumer sales for a while the receipt paper had a scratch field where you could win something. this was to encourage consumers to demand the receipt.

they obviously didn't trust you to self report accurately, but this also reduces the friction, because i don't even need to bother making any reports. i don't think my accountant needs to do anything either. they have access to the same system and probably just verify that i didn't misfile or forget something. of course apart from the printed receipts everything is digital.

Restaurants in Quebec are similar: forcibly integrated into a provincial sales tax system and part of your receipt has some government segment.

Largely because unscrupulous restaurants had, I think they were called “zippers” to perma-erase revenue/transactions.

Some EU countries did a “if you don’t get a receipt, you don’t have to pay”, which erased the concept of a bar tab. During a drinking session with friends, you’d end up with a stack of receipts to pay as you got a receipt with each beer request.

Income taxes are a similar idea: employer pays on your behalf and then you do some manual or virtually automatic reconciliation at the end of the year. Canada is pretty much the latter where the gov already has all the info and you can import it into your tax software where most people don’t have to change anything.

I dunno why countries like sales taxes but low tariffs. Would be easier to tariff imports at a small number of points and let everything internal run free. Why have sales tax on local production.

The more “tax points” you create, the harder it’s going to be to enforce it all.