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.

Some people don't realize that receipts are not for them (the customer).

They're to make sure employees ring up the sale (and don't pocket the money)

and now I understand they're for the government too, to make sure taxes are paid.

tariffs wouldn't capture anything locally produced.