Australia Unveils a 2.25% Levy on Meta, Google, and TikTok’s Local Revenues
The News Bargaining Incentive applies from 1 July 2026. Platforms that deal with news organisations get full or partial offsets against the levy. The legislation explicitly excludes pure AI chatbot services from coverage.
(Communications Minister Anika Wells and PM Albanese announced the draft on Tuesday)
Australia is introducing a "News Bargaining Incentive"—a 2.25% levy on the Australian revenues of Meta, Google, and TikTok that will apply unless those platforms strike deals to pay local news publishers for the journalism appearing on their platforms.
The levy is structured as a market incentive rather than a mandate.
Here’s how it works:
- Platforms that negotiate and sign deals with Australian news publishers will receive offsets against the levy, with larger offsets available for agreements made with smaller, regional news organisations.
- If platforms do not reach any deals, they must pay the full 2.25% levy on their Australian revenue, with proceeds distributed to news publishers based on their journalist headcounts.
Key points:
- The legislation defines the levy base as a platform’s consolidated revenue "attributable to Australia", calculated from financial statements three years prior, a backward-looking assessment designed to prevent revenue manipulation.
- The specificity of the calculation base is significant given that Australian revenues for global platforms like Meta and Google are not always publicly disclosed at a granular level.
- Australia has not disclosed an estimate of what the levy would generate if the major platforms refused to deal.
- This proposal replaces the 2021 News Media Bargaining Code, which required platforms to negotiate in good faith with publishers or face mandatory arbitration. The government argues that those rules are "no longer working effectively."
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