Australia plans to tax digital platforms that don't pay for news

The Australian government says it will tax large digital platforms and search engines unless they agree to share revenue with Australian news media organizations. Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones and Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said Thursday the tax would apply from Jan. 1 to tech companies that earn more than $160 million a year in revenue from Australia. They include Meta, Google, Alphabet and ByteDance. The tax would be offset through money paid to Australian media organizations. The size of the tax is not clear. The move comes after Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, announced that it would not renew three-year deals to pay Australian news publishers for their content.