Source : Perth Now news
Tech firms will pay a higher levy or strike more deals to avoid the charge under planned tweaks to an initiative to force them to hand over some of their revenue to media companies.
The proposed news bargaining incentive will push companies like Google, Meta and TikTok to strike commercial deals with news organisations to use the publishers’ content on their platforms.
If deals are struck, the companies will pay a smaller share of their Australian advertising revenues to the government than if they refuse to reach agreements.
The levy will apply to tech giants with domestic revenues of $250 million or more, with any funds raised to be redistributed to the media sector.
But after a consultation period on the changes, which Labor hopes to legislate when parliament returns in Spring, elements of the incentive have been tipped further in favour of news publishers.
The maximum levy that tech companies will pay on their revenue has been increased from 2.5 per cent from a previously proposed 2.25 per cent charge, the government revealed on Monday.
They will also have to strike at least six deals with publishers – rather than four – to fully discharge the liability.
But the revenue used to calculate the tech giants’ payments will be limited to digital advertising income attributable to the Australian market.
Assistant Treasurer Daniel Mulino said the government had shown good faith in negotiating with both the platforms and media companies during the consultation process.
“Australian journalism is important to a well-functioning democracy and we want it to be sustainable now and into the future,” he said.
“We want digital platforms to do deals with a diverse range of media organisations.”
Approved agreements with large media companies would allow tech companies to offset 150 per cent of their liabilities, while deals with smaller firms attract a 200 per cent offset – up from 170 per cent under previous plans.
A professional networking platform carve-out that would have excluded LinkedIn has been scrapped.
The previous draft laws, released in April, were heavily criticised by the tech giants as “a government-mandated transfer of wealth from one industry to another”.
