Think about it as the weak government trick to collect taxes. Government is weak and can't enforce tax collection: i.e 99% of citizens will still not comply even if you are aggressive in auditing. So instead, they collect taxes where you can't escape them.

Since you need to register land/house at the national registry (or similar), they require that you pay a tax before you can execute such a registration. Obviously, you can lie here but at least they are getting something out of it. Other tricks are taxes when you are leaving the country (buy a stamp so that you can board a plane), arbitrarily giving tickets on highways, super high taxes on telecommunication, cars and other stuff where you need to go through government, taxes collected by municipality go to the government instead, etc...

It'd be interesting to study all countries and deduce that if a government is using these measures then it is a failed government.