> Sounds like a terrible country

That's gratuitous. Please drop the flamebait when commenting here.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13233445 and marked it off-topic.

Edit: you've been using HN primarily for political and ideological battle. That is an abuse of this site. We ban accounts that do it, so please stop.

For the first part it matches Australia. You are required to have an ABN to reclaim tax on anything. Of course most people would just handle things via cash payments.