Rock ' in 'Terminator 5'? It is rumored to possibly join Arnold Schwarzenegger by Dwayne Johnson sequel

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The Rock could star in "Terminator 5" according to this new rumor.

From the files of internet speculation comes this gem about Dwayne Johnson possibly starring with Arnold Schwarzenegger in the recently fast-tracked "Terminator 5." According to WWE Examiner, "one version of the script is being produced specifically for The Rock himself."

HuffPost Entertainment reached out to Johnson's representatives to confirm the WWE Examiner report about "Terminator 5"; this post will be updated with their response.

That Johnson would potentially lend his name to "Terminator 5" is hardly surprising. In the last three years, the 41-year-old star has breathed life to fledgling blockbuster series like "Fast and Furious," "The Journey to the Center of the Earth" and "G.I. Joe."

""We call him franchise Viagra," "G.I. Joe: Retaliation" director Jon M. Chu said earlier this year. "He comes in and he elevates everything, not just physically, but energy-wise."

Johnson, an avid social media user, made no mention of this "Terminator 5" report on his Twitter page. The star is currently filming "Hercules" with Brett Ratner. (Yes, Johnson is playing Hercules.)

This, of course, wouldn't be the first time The Rock and Schwarzenegger appeared together onscreen. There was also this four-second moment from "The Rundown":

For more on the rumors about Johnson and "Terminator 5," head to WWE Examiner.

[WWE Examiner via Ain't It Cool]

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Olivia Munn looked gorgeous in a red dress while out in New York City on June 19.

Vanessa Hudgens and Ashley Greene attended the Oakley Bali Pro / Learn to surf on June 19 in Benoa, Bali, Indonesia.

Kris Jenner and her daughters Kourtney and Khloe Kardashian were spotted out grocery shopping at Ralph's before getting frozen yogurt at Menchie's in Calabasas, Calif., on June 18.

Kristen Wiig and Darren Criss posed together at the "Girl Most Likely" premiere at the 2013 Champs Elysees Film Festival at Publicis Champs Elysees in Paris, France on June 18.

Busy Philipps' baby bump was on full display as she ran errands in West Hollywood, Calif., on June 18.

Selena Gomez stopped by a beauty salon in Hollywood, Calif., on June 18.

Taylor Lautner showed off his skills as he leapt along a stone wall on the set of "Tracers" on June 18 in New York City.

Eva Longoria attended the Lifetime Original Series "Devious Maids" Premiere Party held at Bel-Air Bay Club in Pacific Palisades, Calif., June 17.

Miranda Kerr smiled for the camera while out and about in New York City on June 17.

Brad Pitt hit the streets of Times Square to make an appearance on ABC's "Good Morning America" to promote his new film "World War Z" on June 17 in New York City.

Heidi Klum was seen leaving the "Today" show in a see-through striped top in New York City on June 17.

Taylor Swift posed at the MuchMusic Video Awards in Toronto on June 16.

Diane Kruger and a friend went out for lunch with a friend at Serafina in New York City on June 15.

Pregnant Fergie was seen at a recording studio in Santa Monica, Calif., on June 15.

Michael C. Hall and Jennifer Carpenter posed together at the "Dexter" Series Finale Premiere Party at Milk Studios in Hollywood, Calif., on June 15.

Stacy Keibler revealed the secret weapon behind her rockin’ bod as she fit in a workout with the Cybex Arc Trainer in Los Angeles, Calif., on June 15.

Rihanna flashed lots of leg at Cuckoo night club in London on June 14.

Sandra Bullock attended "The Heat" Gala Screening at Curzon Mayfair in London on June 13.

Ashley & Mary-Kate Olsen were spotted out and about on their 27th birthday in New York City on June 13.

Ali Larter grabbed her mat and headed to yoga class in Los Angeles, Calif., on June 13.

Miley Cyrus rocked a bra top at the MySpace Event held at The El Rey Theater in Los Angeles, Calif., on June 12.

Kim Kardashian showed off her huge baby bump after lunch with Jonathan Cheban at Casa Vega in Beverly Hills, Calif., on June 12.

Sarah Jessica Parker walked her son James Wilkie to school on June 12 in New York City.

Julianne Hough left The Den of Hollywood after enjoying a night out on June 11 in West Hollywood, Calif.

Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer attended the premiere of HBO's "True Blood" at ArcLight Cinemas Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, Calif., on June 11.

A smiling Katie Holmes left Tartine restaurant wearing an adorable spring dress in the West Village in New York City on June 11.

Halle Berry and her fiance Olivier Martinez leave the Plaza Athenee and do some shopping along Avenue Montaigne in Paris, France on June 11

Heidi Klum and her boyfriend Martin Kristen grabbed lunch together and do some shopping in New York City on June 11.

Denise Richards visited ABC studios for an appearance on "Good Morning America" June 11 in New York City.

Maria Menounos prepped for summer beach days, picking up designer swimwear and cover-ups at Marshalls in Los Angeles, Calif., on June 10.

Amy Adams attended the "Man Of Steel" World Premiere at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City on June 10.

"Les Miserables co-stars Russell Crowe and Hugh Jackman met up for a coffee at Hugh's cafe, Laughing Man in New York City on June 9.

Cat Deeley attended the 1st Annual Children Mending Hearts Style Sunday in Beverly Hills, Calif., on June 9.

Anna Kendrick attended The 67th Annual Tony Awards at Radio City Music Hall on June 9 in New York City.

Pink debuted her new long hair while enjoying a day out with daughter Willow in Venice Beach, Calif., on June 9.

Jessica Alba and Cash Warren took their girls to lunch in Los Angeles, Calif., on June 9.

Jessica Biel was geared up for a workout as she headed out for a walk with her two dogs in Tribeca in New York City on June 8.

Katy Perry wad seen leaving the Pantages Theater after attending Bjork concert with friends in Los Angeles, Calif., on June 8.

Lady Gaga was pictured hanging out poolside with friends while on vacation in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico on June 7.

George Clooney was snapped while directing scenes for his upcoming film, "The Monuments Men" in Rye, England on June 6. The actor seized the opportunity to promote his Casamigos Tequila as well, wearing a t-shirt for his ultra premium brand.

Anne Hathaway was seen filming a scene on the set of her upcoming movie "Song One" in NYC on June 6.

Hayden Panettiere left the "BBC Breakfast" studios after making an appearance in Manchester, England on June 6.

Taylor Swift attended the 2013 CMT Music awards at the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville on June 5.

Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban attended the 2013 CMT Music awards at the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville on June 5.

Eddie Cibrian and LeAnn Rimes do an interview at The Grove for the show "EXTRA" in Los Angeles, Calif., on June 5.

Leonardo DiCaprio watched the French Open on June 5 in Paris, France.

Naomi Watts was seen out for a stroll with friends in New York City on June 5.

Ashton Kutcher left Mila Kunis's apartment in London wearing an Indiana Jones style fedora on June 5.

Victoria Beckham and her son Brooklyn attended the Glamour Women of the Year Awards 2013 at Berkeley Square Gardens on June 4 in London.

Jennifer Garner took her son Samuel to get a haircut on June 4 in Santa Monica, Calif.

Rihanna took advantage of her day off and went shopping at Chanel and Colette stores and dined at L'avenue on June 4 in Paris.

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Margaret Wheeler Johnson: barbecue

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"Is that what I think it is?"

This wasn't the way I intended to begin our engagement. Ali put so much into the proposal. Hours planning the trip to Mexico that she'd surprised me with that morning. The stress of bringing a concealed diamond through two airports (no one has ever watched the TSA so closely). She had booked a hotel on the coast, and after we'd eaten fish tacos by the ocean and gone back to a room that had its own hammock, she gave me a ring she'd designed herself that couldn't have been more perfect for me.

And all I could come up with in a moment I had looked forward to for months was a response about as grateful and enthusiastic as, "Cool. Did you bring sunscreen?"

Ali thinks, wrongly, that I was unimpressed. The truth is that I didn't know what to do in a situation that felt so scripted by romantic comedies and YouTube proposal videos that it was hard to summon a response that felt authentic but also good enough. TV writer Sarah Heyward recently tweeted, "I won't say yes unless Nancy Meyers writes and directs my future marriage proposal." Because Nancy hadn't written mine, I didn't know what to say.

My underwhelming answer didn't set us back too much. Ali passed out almost immediately in exhaustion, we spent the rest of that late January weekend drinking margaritas on the beach, and we were getting married, which was the point.

We hurtled forward into an engagement that we decided only needed to be five months long. We wanted It to happen in June, didn't like the idea of waiting a year and a half, and, in true type-A fashion, saw no reason this wedding-planning thing everyone gets so worked up about couldn't be executed efficiently and without fanfare.

Very soon I realized that an engagement was not what I thought it was.

Ali and I are very different. I worry about things I can control, she worries about things she can't. I am loud when I am happy, she yells when she is mad. Ali has always been cool. I got only one detention ever and asked permission to use the hour to get ahead on homework. I am given to grand gestures and swooping affection, Ali to dry humor, skillful negotiation and quietly slipping her hand into mine.

These differences serve us well when it comes time to face the world each day. They were not so useful when it came to planning how we would get hitched.

Unsurprisingly, Ali would have preferred to elope. Her appetite for social tableaux is about a minute long. For the first month of our engagement, she referred to our wedding as The Barbecue, and she planned to wear jeans.

I didn't want a cathedral train or a reception at the Pierre -- once upon a time I was a New Orleans debutante, and five white ball gowns, weighed down with everything they represented, were enough to last me a lifetime.

But I wanted a something. An intimate, beautiful something. We have a lot to celebrate. Ali says she thought she'd never like anyone enough to marry them. I thought I might marry someone but possibly wouldn't like them much.

The only recurring childhood dream I can recall is one I had when I was 7 or 8. In the nightmare it was always 10 minutes before my wedding, and I knew I was marrying the wrong guy, but everything was already paid for so I felt I had to go through with it.

I think we can all tell what that dream was about.

Our real wedding is, for me, in part, a celebration of that dream not in any way coming true. I am marrying a woman I adore in front of the people who know me best, and it all feels deeply right.

So Ali granted me a "something." Figuring out what exactly was the challenge.

Yes, a few decisions were easy. No bouquets, no wedding party, no band, very few guests. Her parents' backyard on the Long Island Sound. One of Ali's best friends as the officiant.

The rest was hard, at least at first. Why did I cry on the subway over the Sunday brunch we're not having? I have never understood the logic of seeing everyone all over again the next morning when you're hungover and look considerably less attractive than you did the night before. And why did I insist for several weeks that Ali shouldn't see my dress -- or me -- before the wedding? Weddings, I discovered, are excellent at temporarily suspending your ability to think for yourself.

In a moment of unprecedented cultural acceptance of gay marriage, I also failed to realize that certain customs are just trickier for two girls to execute. How would we walk into the ceremony? How could we do our first dance in a non-awkward way? What would Ali wear that wasn't a dress -- not her thing -- but didn't make her look like a dude, which is also not her thing? What would I wear?

Which brings me to the dress.

A lot of the things we didn't agree on I could handle. Sure, it's a startling moment when you realize that because you are marrying your equal, you cannot foist your tastes upon her. It was a surprise when we didn't gravitate toward the same china pattern, and when she thought the flowers I liked were fussy, except for peonies, my favorite, which she admitted she finds boring. I think I took all of that remarkably in stride.

But nothing prepared me for the moment when the woman I love said to me, "Don't you think you should wear a short dress?"

"So not a wedding dress," one of my best friends said when I reported this development.

"Right," I said.

"Oh, I don't think so," said my friend, bless her.

I wanted long. I knew that, somehow, feeling beautiful on that day depended on it. Beyond that, though, I couldn't see it.

I modeled wedding gowns for my friends on several pedestals across New York City, including one dress that I swear was the most flattering thing I will ever put on my body. They oohed and aahed and were generally wonderful, but I just couldn't get into it.

I felt like I'd seen all of those dresses before on other brides at other weddings, and also that most of them made too much of a statement. I hated the idea of The Bride as the star of the show. Not only was I one of two brides, I wanted whatever I wore to fit not a teenager making a curtsey but an adult making a vow.

I found my dress by accident, I think in March. We were in a department store. Ali was trying on the pair of white scuba pants she is wearing down the aisle, and I was meandering in the racks. The dress I happened upon wasn't a wedding gown, but it was white and it was ... interesting. It looked like something I could wear on a Saturday night near the water in June.

As I was trying it on, Ali texted me asking for my opinion on a top she'd found. I texted back that I wanted her thoughts on a dress. She came around barefoot from the other fitting room in a garment since known as "The Pocahontas Shirt," opened the door and said, "Oh. Wow." I bought it.

So not all of this engagement's surprises were distressing. Some were actually funny, at least in retrospect. April was hilarious. I didn't expect it to take me three hair appointments to realize that The Taylor Swift wasn't me. I didn't expect the makeup artist to ask me in front of my fiancée and future mother-in-law what I plan to do about my eyebrow "situation." (I'll say it again: I am blond and own tweezers. I have no situation.) I didn't expect that when our parents met for the first time in New Orleans, the water pressure would go out in my entire hometown right before everyone needed to get ready for lunch.

The more challenging surprises were tough in part because I took their difficulty to mean that I was a defective engaged person. When finding secular wedding readings that aren't maudlin proved nearly impossible, I decided I was a fraudulent and failed English major. When we moved into a new apartment a month before the wedding -- it was May, and we are now confirmed masochists -- I thought I should have been more organized. In spite of an Internet full of articles on the money issues, family issues, body-image issues and general stress weddings bring up for everyone, I was convinced that I should be doing it all better.

The hard parts also caught me off guard because the most important part of all of this felt so impossibly easy. My unromantic answer to Ali's proposal reflected most of all how unreasonably certain I have been since I met her that this was it.

That unreasonable certainty is evident in an article I published soon after we met, in which I outlined what a good relationship entails. I wrote it quickly, almost urgently, with a sense of authority that a veteran of not too many relationships had no business having, much less expressing, exactly one month into this one. And yet, weeks into dating Ali, I wrote, "You just know."

The certainty, which Ali evidently shared, carried us through our early aisle-or-no-aisle discussion, the fun but also delicate process of becoming part of one another's families and my recent seating-chart meltdown. It also got us through some significant curveballs that our life outside the wedding -- we did somehow manage to maintain one -- threw at us along the way. As a result, when one of our guests asked me two weeks ago if I'm nervous, I realized I'm not. Not even a little.

Being so certain has a couple of significant hazards, though. In addition to making me think everything was going to go more smoothly than it possibly could, it threatened to obscure one of the best parts of being engaged.

I realized this last weekend when we were in the car on the way home from Ali's parents' house. I was thinking about how we're almost there. My dress is ready. I finally figured out my hair. (I should have known The Naomi Watts was it all along.) I've purchased what I believe to be the appropriate underwear, and my top-secret, possibly misguided wedding-gift plan for Ali is under way. Flowers are ordered, menu tasted, Ali's meticulously curated playlist complete. My family descends on New York next week.

I looked at her driving, at that profile I now know so well, and suddenly felt all over again how intensely I wanted to keep her. That's when I realized that I've been so certain of this, of us, and so focused on the event that will legally bind us that I haven't spent enough time letting myself be reasonably giddy about what is happening.

I found a person whose integrity and intelligence floor me just about every day, who works hard, makes superior friends, tells me the truth, lets me know where she is and cares where I am, who makes me laugh and hears me out and IMs me things like, "I'm extra into you today," who agreed to our Intimate, Beautiful Something Barbecue. I fell hard for a woman who will always be slightly better than me, and she loves me back.

Ali, what I meant to say is "Yes."

Follow Margaret Wheeler Johnson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mwjohnso

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Divorce Care Package: How To Survive Divorce (And Pregnancy), According To Emma Johnson

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Si nunca hay un momento que necesita una pequeña distracción en tu vida, es durante el proceso de divorcio. Es por ello que lanzamos nuestra serie de Paquete de cuidado de divorcio . Con cada post, le mostraremos qué cosas--libros, películas, recetas, otros ayudaron a aliviar el estrés en el medio de divorcio, con la esperanza de que algunos de sus selecciones servirá bien, demasiado. ¿Quieres compartir lo que superado su divorcio? Envíanos un email a divorce@huffingtonpost.com o tweet @HuffPost divorcio

En su sitio web, madre soltera ricos, escritor y periodista Emma Johnson camina a monoparentales a través de los altibajos de la crianza de los hijos solos, y describe los pasos que se deben adoptar para garantizar sus familias es financieramente seguros. Johnson escribe de la experiencia ganada; después de que su marido sufrió una lesión cerebral, divorció de ella, dejándola con su hija y un niño en el camino.

¿Una historia, derecha? A continuación, Johnson comparte con nosotros las cosas--cotizaciones, Francés productos de repostería y más--que le ayudó a pasar ese período de su vida.

Presentación de la carga

"Es 'Usted puede sobrevivir mucho más de lo que usted piensa que puede'. En las horas más oscuras a veces nos preguntamos si nos se desmenuzará. Pero por supuesto, nosotros no. Pasé por un infierno de un tiempo para un par de años--primero contendiendo con lesión cerebral de mi esposo, al final de mi matrimonio, traer a un bebé al mundo, ingeniárselas para apoyarnos financieramente solo. Pero luego me las arreglé todo eso--y algo más. He encantado yo."

"Una cama nueva. Un año después de mi partida, fui un nuevo colchón y ropa de cama blanca. Mi ex odiaba nada blanco, así nunca recibí mi ropa de sueño, y opté por un chollo Pillow-Top, que encontró demasiado caliente para dormir. Además, hay algo en la limpieza de su espacio de algo tan específico de matrimonio como una cama! Tengo que decir que mi vida citas abrió significativamente después de eso".

"Pain au chocolate. Cuando yo era muy embarazada y a la altura de mi drama familiar, quisiera comer un desayuno saludable y equilibrado con mi hija, le caiga en la guardería y continuar recto a la panadería cerca de mi apartamento para un croissant de chocolate dulce. Cada día probado simplemente tan delicioso como el día anterior".

"Llorando. Durante mi más oscura, más tensionado y pánico en los próximos meses, mantuvo la cabeza fría, sobresalía la mandíbula y se hizo cargo de la empresa. Eso fue durante el día. Después de ir a dormir y cuando fue terminado mi trabajo, yo me refugié en la comodidad insonora de mi cuarto de baño, que se sentó en la tapa de asiento de inodoro, que se derrumbó en mis brazos doblados en el borde del fregadero y rompió a llorar. Cada noche".

"Mis hijos tienen este pequeño libro de fotografía Retratos de Mary Cassatt de mamás y sus hijos. Estas escenas tiernas me recordaron las experiencias potentes, universales de ser una madre--y cómo muchas mujeres han pasado por todas las alegrías y angustia que vienen con la familia. Estas imágenes me ayudó a sentirse menos solos."

¡Estamos en contacto! Si deseas HuffPost divorcio en Facebook y Twitter.

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Dave Johnson: A Better Way To Tax The Multinationals

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We the People put together a system here with schools, universities, scientific research, courts, a stable financial/monetary system, infrastructure like roads, dams, airports, and all the other components of a (used-to-be) prospering economy. That takes money, and naturally we expect the beneficiaries of all of that investment to give back into the system. But then the beneficiaries of that system figure out ways to get around paying back - and the larger and wealthier they are the more ways they find to give back even less.

Jeeze, look at what we learned about Apple!

It is time for Americans to change to a tax system that really gets corporations to pay their fair share - and stop letting them move their taxable income all over the world.

Who Pays Corporate Taxes

Any discussion of corporate taxes should begin with an understanding of what (who, actually) we are talking about. This chart shows who owns the corporations:

As of 2007 the top 1 percent owned 38.2 percent of corporate stock. The next 9 percent owned an additional 43 percent. For the math-challenged, that means the top 10 percent owned 81.2 percent of all corporate stock. The bottom 60 percent of us owned 2.5 percent.

When we talk about taxing corporations, we are really talking about taxing the wealthiest few.

The Current Problem

The top corporate tax rate used to be higher (53%, then 46%), but multinational corporations complained that those rates made them "less competitive," so we "reformed" it down to 35 percent. Then these giant companies went from country to country, complaining that their tax rates made businesses "less competitive" and these countries "reformed" their tax rates. So now our rates again are higher than rates in many other countries. This "downward spiral" has shifted taxes worldwide away from the top few, and governments have fewer resources.

Big Mistakes In Current Corporate Tax Laws

U.S. companies that earn profits outside our borders \have to pay the corporate tax on their income minus any taxes they pay to other countries. So if a company makes $1,000 profit in Axylvanistan and pays them a tax rate of 10%, they only have to pay a tax rate of 25 percent here. But a mistake in current tax law lets companies "defer" paying these taxes until they "repatriate" the money, or "bring it home."

Caused Jobs, Factories, Profit Centers To Leave The Country

To take advantage of this loophole companies started moving jobs, factories and profit centers out of the country to keep their profits from being made inside the U.S. One scheme, for example, involves transferring intellectual property (patents, etc.) to a subsidiary registered in a tax-haven country and making it appear that a big part of your costs are intellectual property license fees paid to that subsidiary. (This is why you hear about "Double Irish" and "Dutch Sandwich" tax schemes and subsidiaries that are only mailboxes in tax-haven counties, etc.) Soon these giant multinationals were holding many billions of dollars outside of the country to "defer" their taxes.

Then these companies came to the government and offered to bring that big hoard of money back to the U.S. and use it to "create jobs" if we would just charge them a really low tax rate -- just this once. So we gave them a "repatriation tax holiday" in 2004. The companies brought the money back, and not only didn't "create jobs," they doubled down on the scheme, moving even more jobs, factories and profit centers out of the country. ("Hey, they fell for it, now we know how to avoid taxes forever!")

We Gave In, So They Did It More

Now after moving more jobs, factories and profit centers out of the country these multinational corporations are holding somewhere between $1.7 and $2 trillion in subsidiaries outside the country, untaxed. Apple alone has over $100 billion outside the country. Google reported $10 billion in profits in Bermuda in 2011. And these companies say they will not bring the money back without another "tax holiday."

This $1.7-2 trillion of untaxed represents up to $750 billion we could use for schools, BRIDGES, high-speed rail, infrastructure jobs, you name it -- all things we are really need to be doing now, to make all of our lives better. So this is serious business.

Possible Solutions

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) have introduced the Corporate Tax Fairness Act that just ends the deferral, so these companies have to just bring the money back, pay their taxes, and end all the schemes to take advantage of this loophole.

Friday's New York Times had a "Room for Debate" roundtable discussion, Getting a Fair Share From Multinationals, with differing points of view. The suggestions range from the multinational corporate idea: "Don't tax us at all" to a "minimum tax rate" that guarentees We the people a small slice of the pie, at least.

In this discussion Alan J. Auerbach of the University of California at Berkeley offers a good diea, Tax Earnings Where Products Are Sold. The idea is simple: tax these companies where they sell, not where they claim the profits are made.

The fundamental problem is our reliance on the concepts of residence, or where a company is located, and source, or where the company's assets and production activities are located. These concepts may have worked reasonably well in the 1930s, but they do not hold up when confronting a multinational company with global operations.

... A better approach would be to tax a company's earnings based on where its products are sold, using what is known as the destination approach. For example, earnings from the production of a smart phone sold in the United States would be subject to U.S. corporate tax, regardless of the company's residence or where the company reports its production to have occurred.

Using destination to determine tax liability would allow the United States to impose tax on its fair share of multinational earnings while eliminating any incentive for companies to move their activities or themselves to other countries, since the same U.S. tax would still apply regardless of residence or source.

Roger Hickey wrote about this idea the other day, in his CAF post, Apple: Bad Model for "Tax Reform." California, New Tax Thinkers, Chart a Better Way,

This new tax system would provide companies absolutely no tax incentive to move production to lower-tax countries. And with the costs of transportation and wages going up around the world, U.S. and non-U.S. companies would likely accelerate the trend toward manufacturing (and hiring) where they sell. And small businesses, now at a disadvantage against big companies able to hide profits all over the world, would be back on a level playing field.

Hickey pointed to Jia Lynn Yang writing at The Washington Post's Wonkblog, Have U.S. states figured out a way to avoid a global race to the bottom on taxes? "... a number of states have come up with a simple way to calculate what firms owe them in taxes: If a company sells its product or services in a given state, it pays a tax proportionate to the sales in that state."

Harold Meyerson echoed this the other day in his column at the Washington Post, Apple's U.S. revenue should be taxed,

There may, however, be another solution: taxing corporations on their revenue rather than their profits. If Apple gets?60?percent of its revenue from sales in the United States, Apple should pay U.S. taxes on that revenue. Let France collect taxes from Apple on its sales in France, China on its sales in China and so forth. Taking production and the location of corporate headquarters out of the equation would end the noxious practices of placing factories where the taxes are lowest and creating dummy subsidiaries to funnel profits through low-tax countries. Companies would still roam the globe in search of the cheapest labor, though a better Congress might one day seek to reward businesses for keeping and generating high-value-added jobs in the United States.

This idea comes from Bill Parks, who explained it in a recent USA Today op-ed, End abusive offshore tax loophole,

The good news is that California has developed a simple solution that neutralizes this loophole, Proposition 39. It works like this: A company that sells its products or services in California will pay income tax related to those sales.

For example:

ABC Corporation has $10 million of sales of MP3 players in 2012.
$1 million of those sales (10 percent of total sales) are made in California.
ABC Corporation's total worldwide profit from all MP3 sales is $1 million.
10 percent of that profit is related to California sales.
So 10 percent of ABC Corporation's worldwide profit will be taxed by California as California income.
Notice that it does not matter whether the ABC Corporation is a California, U.S., multinational or foreign corporation.

Tax them where they sell, instead of where they claim profits. It works for me.

P.S. Some argue that we shouldn't tax corporations because they just "pass through" taxes onto their customers through higher prices. But income taxes are on profits, and companies optimally price their products to maximize profits, which means they can't increase prices to cover taxes without reducing profits. And if they lowered profits, they would have lower taxes, and could lower the price and have higher profits, but then they would have to raise the price ... Or if they had mispriced their products before the taxes were calcuated and were charging too little, a price increase to cover taxes would mean even more profits which would mean they would owe more taxes, which would mean they would have to raise prices even more, which would mean ... eventually they would charge infinity. Only phone and cable companies can do that.

-----

This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF. Sign up here for the CAF daily summary

Follow Dave Johnson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/dcjohnson

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