Can India Follow Australia’s Big Tech Tax Model For News? (Image credit: AI-generated) Australia has asked major tech giants like TikTok, Google and Meta to strike deals with local news publishers or face a 2.25 per cent tax on local revenue as per its newly proposed News Bargaining Incentive. This move comes as news consumption is rapidly shifting to social media, where users depend heavily on their feeds rather than media outlets, increasing concerns around fair compensation. India’s Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA) and the Indian Newspaper Society have often raised similar questions whether a similar path should be adopted. Cyber law expert and Supreme Court advocate Pavan Duggal stated that India has the power to bring a similar taxation, but nothing concrete has been proposed yet. “Currently there is no such information in the public domain about a proposal for taxing big tech companies. But the sovereign government has the sovereign right to tax big tech companies,” said Duggal. Explaining how global tech firms benefit heavily from the Indian market and should comply with the local laws, he said, “If you are benefiting from a market, then you will have to comply with the laws of that particular land, including taxation laws. You cannot take economic benefits and avoid tax obligations.” Notably, Duggal asserted that India should take a stronger stance going forward. He said, “India must learn to flex its muscles because it is not just the biggest democracy in the world; it is the most populous nation in the world. Indian data is going outside with no reciprocal benefits for the Indian ecosystem.” Tarun Pathak, Research Director at Counterpoint Research, said that India has taken a few similar steps in discussing revenue sharing between platforms and content publishers. However, he notes that copying Australia's model might not be easy in India. Pathak said, “There have been some steps that have been highlighted in this direction when Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw recently emphasised the social media platform must share revenue with the content creators. But the ad revenue disparity is huge in India, with Google and Meta being the leaders in this space.” He pointed out that the Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA) has been petitioning the Competition Commission of India to look at the issue from a monopoly point of view. However, he cautioned that revenue-sharing models might not be as straightforward. He stated that when it comes to the revenue sharing, it is a bit more complex than it looks. The platforms are going to change as a medium to consume content; it will change in a big way, he added. Pathak mentioned, “It needs to be a well-thought-out policy rather than comparing it with one country like what Australia did because it is easier to implement in some countries than in a diverse country like India. The technology landscape will change in coming times and the traditional form of ad revenue will not be similar as we go further.” India has not proposed any law to tax tech companies like Australia as of now. However, the debate is picking up pace. Industry bodies like DNPA and the Indian Newspaper Society have been pushing for fair compensation as policymakers weigh how to balance innovation and the sustainability of journalism in the era that is driven by AI. Get Latest News live on Times Now along with Breaking News and Top Headlines from Technology Science and around the world. Govind Choudhary is the Chief Copy Editor for Tech at Times Now with over five years of experience in the media industry. He covers consumer technolog... View More