Structural Issue with Collapse Transformations + Track Matte — Why Are Internal Blending Modes Disabled?

As a Photoshop user for several decades, I encountered a structural issue after using After Effects for only a short period of time that I find difficult to understand.

When a precomposition contains multiple layers using blending modes such as Multiply and Screen, enabling Collapse Transformations allows those internal blending modes to interact correctly with layers in the parent composition.

However, as soon as a Track Matte is applied to the entire precomposition, that pass-through blending behavior is effectively lost.

Collapse Transformations and Track Matte are both standard features, and After Effects allows them to be enabled together in the UI. Yet combining them effectively disables an important behavior of one of those features.

Photoshop already supports the equivalent concept through Pass Through groups + group masks: internal layers can continue blending with layers outside the group while a mask is applied to the group as a whole.

So why is the equivalent structure not possible in After Effects?

Is there a genuine technical reason that makes this impossible, or is this simply a limitation of an old compositing architecture that has remained unchanged?

As someone who has used Photoshop for decades, I noticed this structural limitation after only a short time using After Effects. Are the many professionals who have used After Effects for years really aware of this limitation and simply accept it as “that's just how After Effects works”?

I also genuinely wonder whether Adobe considers this behavior structurally problematic, or whether this limitation has simply been known and left unchanged for years.