"Red tape" is a pretty common idiom here. It's similar to bureaucracy, but it's more like the useless stuff you have to deal with in order to do something.

Say you want to update your driver's license and you need to bring in some ID and fill out a form. That's regular bureaucracy.

If you want to feed the homeless so you have to get a permit for an event, prove your volunteers have food-handling training, fill out forms for your volunteers, notify the police that there will be a public gathering, schedule an inspection of the facility, etc, that's red tape.

Another way to look at it might be that Bureaucracy describes the system in which offices communicate with each other, and Red Tape are the tasks/forms/whatever you have to complete in order to get what you want approved.

It refers to bureaucracy but specifically in a negative way, as in unnecessary and obstructive bureaucracy that just serves as busy work between people and getting what they want or need from the government in terms of services or approvals.

Looks like high usage in UK and USA and Canada (as colonies) since it refered to the red tape used To bind legal documents closed. As a UK to Canada resident. i can say I just knew what the term meant from hearing it so often in conversations or on the news, but never though to look up where the term came from. TIL