Australia moves to tax Meta, Google & TikTok to fund newsrooms

Melbourne: Australia has proposed taxing digital giants Meta, Google and TikTok a proportion of their revenue to pay news reporters. Govt released draft legislation in this regard on Tuesday. Govt intends to introduce the same in parliament by July 2 that would create a financial incentive for the social media companies to strike deals with news organisations to pay for journalism.

Australian PM Anthony Albanese said a monetary value needed to be attached to journalists' work. "It shouldn't just be able to be taken by a large multinational corporation and used to generate profits for that organisation with no compensation appropriate for the people who produce that creative content," Albanese said. "We think that investment in journalism is critical to a healthy democracy," he added.

Digital platforms had been pressured to strike deals with Australian news publishers to pay for journalism by legislation passed in 2021 that created the country's News Media Bargaining Code. The platforms chose to reach commercial deals with news creators rather than be forced into arbitration and have a judge set the price. But they have since avoided renewing those deals by removing news from their services.

The proposed News Bargaining Incentive would charge major platforms that choose not to strike commercial deals with news publishers a 2.25% tax on their Australian revenue. The platforms would be given offsets and their overall costs would be lowered if they agree to pay publishers for journalism, govt said. Govt expects the incentive would raise between 200 to 250 million Australian dollars ($144 million-$179 million) a year.

Govt would distribute that income among news organisations based on how many journalists each organisation employed, communication minister Anika Wells said.

Opposing the proposed legislation, Meta said news organisations "voluntarily post content on our platforms because they receive value from doing so". "The idea that we take their news content is simply wrong. This proposed legislation, which would apply to platforms regardless of whether news content even appears on our services, is nothing more than a digital services tax," Meta said in a statement.