Meta is challenging a fee levied by the European Union on larger online platforms under its rebooted ecommerce rules. While a number of tech giants have Meta is challenging a fee levied by the European Union on larger online platforms under its rebooted ecommerce rules.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The EU Digital Services Act (DSA), which goes fully into force on in-scope digital services later this month but is already being applied on a sub-set of larger platform providers like Meta, makes provision for charging these so-called very large online platforms (VLOPs) and very large online search engines (VLOSE) to help fund the cost of the bloc’s oversight of their businesses.
But there are a handful of designated platforms that aren’t paying anything in the first round as they reported a loss during the preceding financial year — including Amazon, Pinterest, Snapchat and Wikimedia.
But of course it won’t be drawn into commenting on the effect of any ‘creative accountancy’, channel stuffing, tax planning or other tactics tech giants might deploy to avoid turning a profit on paper (and not have to pay this fee).
Meta’s legal challenge is focused on this component of how the supervisory fee is calculated, with the tech giant arguing the mechanism is unfair since some companies with a lot of users but which report a loss do not have to pay.
“We support the objectives of the DSA and have already introduced a number of measures to help us meet our regulatory obligations but we disagree with the methodology used to calculate these fees,” said a Meta spokesman.
This is because the purpose of fee is not to punish the VLOPs and have a deterrence effect (as it is for the fines, which are capped taking into account revenues), but for the regulated entities to contribute to the monitoring and enforcement without affecting their business operations and expenditure related to compliance.
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