Most people have a fundamental misunderstanding of how lobbying works. Lobbying money is used to pay the actual lobbyists to gather evidence, prepare presentations, and draft legislation proposals. Only a small percentage of lobbying money goes to the politicians. Usually, it's $1000 or so that the politician will agree to hear out the lobbyist. What actually gets traded at these lobbyist meetings is political capital, not money. "If you agree to these tax incentives, you can brag about creating 10,000 jobs".
This is why Bill Gates can't just spend $1 billion to lobby for a carbon tax, despite advocating for one. This would cause a lot of short term pain as the economy needs to readjust with no short term positive benefit, which would be politically disastrous.
Edit: Here's another more tangible example. Facebook spent millions to lobby for the government to establish standards for social media. If they can convince the Democrats to formalize guidelines of what constitutes as hate speech, they can offload some of the burden of their moderation decisions. If they can convince Republicans to require social media to become public square, that's even better because then they don't have to hire as many moderators. Unfortunately for Facebook, such a bill has no benefit from either side because now the politicians have to take responsibility for an unpopular act of censorship or viral misinformation campaign. That's why Facebook tried to establish an independent "supreme court" instead.
A lot of it is also about seeking regulatory capture. If a governing body does not directly reflect corporate interests, there is usually a lengthy campaign to swivel that governing body into what is essentially an element of corporate protection. A lot of "pro-business" rhetoric is spun up in the revolving door of lobbyists and corporate representatives to governing bodies, and members of those bodies to the corporate world. That's how you get an EPA that protects corporate interests from environmental regulation rather than an EPA that protects the environment from corporate interests.
So in short, politicians instead of receiving input from lobbyists, receive verbatim draft legislation proposals and get to play 'who's gonna pay me more to choose which one I'm going with'?
They then use the money they receive from these lobbyists to lie to the people regarding what their job actually entails and self promote themselves as serving their community and country?
Oh and they get to play in the stock market with insider knowledge with impunity to further enrich themselves and get a path to become a lobbyist and get paid millions afterwards?
What point are you trying to make - that there is a convoluted game of politics they engage in to enrich themselves, rather than the simplified bag of money exchanging hands?
If so, you're describing a distinction without a difference as far as I can tell.
That certainly makes sense for some things, but for taxes it seems surprising that the political capital of creating 10000 jobs is more than the political capital of reducing the stress of filing taxes, saving citizens significant amounts of money on tax services, etc.
I think a big part of it is lack of education. Despite the fact that most people outside the US have a pretty simple and streamlined time of paying their taxes, I think most Americans think that the US system is just how it has to be. Or they're victims of misinformation campaigns that tell them falsehoods about how the American system overall allows them to pay less in taxes, or that a streamlined tax system would make it easier for the government to raise taxes in the future (an idea the GOP hates) without taxpayers "noticing" (somehow). To that point, there are still many people who believe that filing taxes should be painful, as a reminder of where the money is going, and exactly how much.
Politicians become lobbyists for the companies they supported.
To secure those huge salaries politicians will accept proposals from companies that hire ex politicians as lobbyists. This way you get to pay for proposals, but the pay is an indirect transaction, but everyone knows how it works so politicians play ball. That is the main reason they wont listen to just anybody, its because you wont pay them huge salaries in the future, not because you come up with bad proposals for them, that doesn't really matter if they get tons of money from you when they retire from politics.
This is why Bill Gates can't just spend $1 billion to lobby for a carbon tax, despite advocating for one. This would cause a lot of short term pain as the economy needs to readjust with no short term positive benefit, which would be politically disastrous.
Edit: Here's another more tangible example. Facebook spent millions to lobby for the government to establish standards for social media. If they can convince the Democrats to formalize guidelines of what constitutes as hate speech, they can offload some of the burden of their moderation decisions. If they can convince Republicans to require social media to become public square, that's even better because then they don't have to hire as many moderators. Unfortunately for Facebook, such a bill has no benefit from either side because now the politicians have to take responsibility for an unpopular act of censorship or viral misinformation campaign. That's why Facebook tried to establish an independent "supreme court" instead.