Stupid question - how all that annual filling of tax papers and snitching on itself to IRS looks from privacy point of view? I think it should be much more concerning than government spying on citizens. Whole couuntry forced to snitch on themselves to the state. What's the point to rant about spying on you, when you willingly spy on yourself and send privacy information to the state? IDK, but for me sending information about how much and where you earned your money is no different from sending contents of your private diary or records of conversations with relatives and friends to the state on the regular basis.

I'm perfectly fine with othere nations traditions, and if chineese like to be like hive insects, than it is their own choice. But when such traditions and choices are contradicts each other inside one culture it is at least weird.

I hardly could imagine something more private than amount of money one earned. But looks like in US this private thing is not even accounted as private in a very weird way - US citizen will hide its earnings and salary even from friends, but willingly and without questions give out all that private info to the IRS. I can't find any example of such weirdness from any other culture, when it is tabooed to share some info with friends, but at the same time is perfectly fine to share same info with some state bureaucrat.