The problem is pragmatism. The tax cuts that were proposed in the USA could actually be a massive windfall, because currently a lot of companies (and individual

The problem is pragmatism. The tax cuts that were proposed in the USA could actually be a massive windfall, because currently a lot of companies (and individuals) keep profits offshore, so pay no tax at all. The USA is different to most countries in that it has almost all the world's biggest companies. The number one way to maximise US tax revenues is to reduce the incentives to offshore cash, and even a small change in the monetary strategy could have huge results. Contrast that with Iceland (~330K people) and their best way to maximise tax revenue is to sell their cheap geothermal power to aluminium smelters and have them pay virtually no company taxes, as taxing the wage earners the smelters generate is their best bet. Pragmatism is often extremely ugly.