TikTok, the Chinese social media short video platform, is the latest tech giant to fight a supervisory
fee
mandated by the EU under the new
Digital Services Act
(DSA). This fee, set at 0.05% of a company's annual worldwide net income, aims to finance the bloc's monitoring of compliance with the DSA's rules.
TikTok
follows
Meta
Platforms, which previously contested the fee.
The DSA targets 22 "Very Large Online Platforms" (VLOPs) and "Very Large Online Search Engines" (VLOSEs), including TikTok, Meta, Google, Apple, and two others. The fee size considers each company's average monthly active users and their previous year's financial performance (profit or loss).
TikTok objects to the fee on several grounds:
* They disagree with the fee itself.
* TikTok claims that the calculations rely on inaccurate third-party estimates of their active user numbers.
The European Commission, however, stands firm on its decision and methodology. It confirms that all VLOPs/VLOSEs met the December 2023 deadline for payment. Notably, companies like Amazon and Elon
Musk's X, which reported losses in 2022, escaped the 2023 fee but face charges in 2024 due to returning to profitability.
English (US) ·