prevent that and yes that does come with a price.

Exactly. It costs money. Money we won't have when let people dodge taxes. 87.5 million isn't much when we're talking about costs in the double digit billions.

Edit: yes you say tax evasion is higher, but I highly doubt moving from a paper recipt to a digital one or none at all will change that significantly

Do you really believe the government would implement something this unpopular unless it worked? If they do something like that, it's abundantly clear that it's necessary. No one starts annoying people with that flimsy paper for ideological reasons.

If you know a little bit about sales tax evasion, it becomes abundantly clear that receipts help. To explain: If you dodge taxes and don't want to get caught you'll still declare a portion of your turnover to not arise suspicion. Hence it doesn't matter if half the people in question get a digital receipt, half (or so) will be declared by tax dodgers as well. Receipts make it extremely easy for IRS agents/tax officers to check whether a till actually registers all sales. They just need to make a few purchases and then later check whether what's on their receipt matches the till's memory. But it doesn't work if they have to ask for a receipt. As I said, a portion of turnover will be declared anyway and it's going to be that with receipts if those are optional.

Hence best we can do is to allow digital as an alternative to printing so that not all receipts are printed. That's possible here in Germany, but it's not used much and it's an either or relation to paper printing. If you have a feasible solution on how to force everyone (including octogenarians with dementia) to receive a digital receipt, I'm all ears. But if you don't then paper is the best we've got. It's also the only solution that's privacy friendly.