It may be a bit of both, but indeed from anecdotal evidence starting a company in the UK and in the Netherlands: A lot of things are set up with less thrust in the UK. As a simple example in the Netherlands if you reclaim VAT as a company tax services just gives you the money and checks later (obviously you need to give it back if it wasn't correct). In the UK you'll need to show invoices, proof etc before HMRC pays you.
Similar for insurance, car insurance in many European countries is done in 1 minute online just an update to a database. In the UK you need a sticker on your car, people that check the stickers etc.
Your comment about car insurance is incorrect. Actually in the UK you do not need to carry any evidence of insurance, MOT, or your licence. If you are stopped, you have 14 days to present it to a police station. Which I think is actually evidence for the exact opposite of what you are describing.
Road tax used to be sticker based (as it is in many many counties), but is also now just an online database edit.
> Similar for insurance, car insurance in many European countries is done in 1 minute online just an update to a database. In the UK you need a sticker on your car, people that check the stickers etc.
You don't need any such sticker in the UK? There used to be a sticker for road tax, but that was done away with. And having a road tax sticker on car windscreens is common across Europe - there were worries at the time the UK got rid of the sticker that motorists would be stopped when on the continent because of not having a sticker.
If anything the truth of your example shows the opposite from what you intend.
False about the VAT in the UK at least for small and medium companies. You need to keep but not show records and you have to say how much is owed you, just like in the Netherlands I imagine.
It's not checked later unless you get audited which is uncommon generally.
False also about road tax.
Perhaps your anecdotes were from a couple of decades ago?
China is kinda funny. Either the question was misunderstood, or they've answered what they know should be the right answer. Everyone I know who as been trained in dealing with Chinese suppliers or business partners is telling me that you can only trust the Chinese as long as their financial interests are aligned with yours.
Chinese colleagues have told me that trust in others is very low in China, that family matters much more than society in general. It can make doing business more expensive and slower in China compared to say Scandinavia where levels of trust are generally very high.
I wonder how neighbors would answer those questions. Would Americans say Canadians are more trustworthy? Or would Colombians say that about Venezuelans?
Similar for insurance, car insurance in many European countries is done in 1 minute online just an update to a database. In the UK you need a sticker on your car, people that check the stickers etc.