That's pretty much the situation in the UK if you are a sole trader. If you set up a limited liability company, that's a separate entity and has its own tax reporting requirement, but nothing onerous.It's becoming more onerous all the time to run a small business in the UK though.
We just got charged £100 just to essentially tick one box with Companies House saying "nothing changed since last year".
The main tax paperwork is the annual financial statements. These are getting more demanding over the next couple of years with the simplified versions that small companies have been allowed to file looking like they will no longer be acceptable after that time.
You now have to file tax returns like PAYE and VAT using approved software. Most of that software - even the big names - ranges from OK but with significant problems and limitations to simply awful.
I heard recently that personal self assessment tax returns for company directors are about to get more complicated as well.
If you have business premises then you have to deal with business rates. Often these are still based on valuations from a time when dinosaurs roamed the planet. Some small businesses have already closed down due to this becoming unaffordable.
I've lost count of how many different kinds of insurance we now have. All have a cost of course.
If you're working solo or the only person from your company working with a specific customer/client then you need to worry about Off Payroll Working as well. That's still a huge mess of ambiguity decades after IR35 was introduced and likely incurs further expenses for legal reviews and insurance policies that shouldn't even need to exist.
Control any personal data? Make sure you register with the ICO and pay their fee too.
Sell online or even run a website? Make sure you know the requirements for information you have to provide and it's in exactly the right format for compliance. (I've even seen businesses working in the compliance industry failing on this one and risking regulatory sanctions.)
The public sector is increasingly pushing for things like Cyber Essentials if you want to be part of its supply chain. That is an absolutely textbook example of regulations that were clearly written for large businesses using a certain operating system. The only options are 100% compliance or failing and 100% compliance is tricky for sole traders or microbusinesses to achieve without disproportionate expense and administration. If you need the certified version then that's another cost and the disruption of being audited to deal with.
We haven't even talked about everything you have to do if you want to take on employee #1 who isn't one of the founders/owners yet.
I don't think it's realistic to say that the UK is supportive of small businesses today. It never really was but at least the the potential financial benefits used to justify the overheads. Now the taxes are far higher - you end up paying double-digit higher overall rates if you set up a Ltd that can actually grow as a business compared to simply trading as a self-employed sole trader now - and the overheads and costs are also far higher in numerous ways. It's no surprise that people are deterred from going into business here and that's really bad for the country because we need the people willing to take the risks and put in the effort to build the next generation of businesses to support our economy and provide much-needed new jobs.