For me, it's due to the terrible process everywhere I've worked for getting approval to buy anything. In some cases, it's even against company policy to pay for

For me, it's due to the terrible process everywhere I've worked for getting approval to buy anything. In some cases, it's even against company policy to pay for a tool out of my own pocket. One product I needed was $10 but the person who was put in charge of all software purchasing decided to try to negotiate a site license with the vendor for a lower price and only for each seat used. She was basically trying to haggle over $10, on the off chance at some point in the future more people would want to use the tool and then the company could pay $8 or some other amount less than $10 per seat. It took months and the involvement of my manager, his manager, and a C level executive to get the $10 purchase approval to go through. I would have paid the $10 myself but that was a "zero tolerance" fireable offense. I get why companies are concerned about having improperly licensed software on their machines, as the consequences can be great, but too many have gone too far in the opposite direction, making purchasing anything a long and convoluted process.