This is a bit more than just red tape madness, it's a strategy to make businesses more transparent. This is about trying to reduce non-reported transactions and too many people dodging their reporting. Even if the rules for cash registries and reporting are detailed, a) that's not really expensive for businesses - it's easy to automate and there are quite a number of competitors; b) compared to accounting and tax rules, they are dead simple.

Receipts or invoices are the basis for a firm's whole economic activity, including the underpinning of their financial reporting, their tax burdens etc. And businesses failing to provide receipts erodes not only the tax base, but also any rights a consumer may have.

The thing with red tape madness is that it is always perfectly justified.

Its actually less red tape. Getting a second copy of a given invoice is trivial, processing of invoices for tax rebates is also mostly automatic (such as health and education expenses); tax invoicing uses well-defined formats, so its trivial to migrate between systems, and perform all kinds of analysis. Also, it increases transparency - you know that eg. the VAT you're paying is not ending in the vendor's pockets.

What red tape madness are you even talking about?