It turns out that the proposed 50 percent tax on content creators attributed to Senate President Tito Sotto was fake. Unfortunately, this was discovered after some impulsive readers had already taken hammer and tongs to the good senator’s name. The perpetrator of this misinformation obviously did not think this through. It is a convoluted and complicated issue, one which may never be untangled.
Firstly, there is the issue of jurisdiction. What is Filipino content? Does this refer to content generated in the Philippines, paid out in the Philippines, or created by Filipino citizens? Is it considered Filipino content if you are a Filipino living and earning outside the country?
Secondly, who will police Filipino content creators? Does the charter of any government agency compass online content creation? Sports in particular is easy to replicate and steal. We have already seen veteran sports journalists like Nick Giongco, Sid Ventura and this writer have content taken verbatim and shared on other platforms with no proper attribution. Basketball and boxing in particular are easy prey, since many venues and tournaments do not regulate spectators who use their phones to record the events. Some of these accounts, particularly in boxing, receive millions of views on a daily basis.
Fair use doctrine allows for the reuse of sound bites, portions of news reports, photos, and even short clips of video for analysis, commentary and criticism. However, there are many unscrupulous content creators who steal entire interviews and critical highlights which rightly belong to the original producers. In many cases, they simply translate voice reports and news items into Filipino, take credit and get away with it, since most sites cannot interpret translated content. Another problem is the sheer number of idea thieves. You would have to file cases against all of them, and it is extremely difficult to pinpoint who started it. The volume of resources needed to do so is too big to accommodate.
Next, how would you decide who to tax and how much to tax them? In most of the cases of monetization, when the creator signs up, he already indicates where he will be taxed. In YouTube for example, you have to fill up a form and indicate if your country has a tax treaty with the US, where the video broadcasting site is located. Then there’s the whole mess of whether or not they qualify for Philippine taxation. In most places in America, you are required to pay a state tax and a federal tax. In some cases, this combined taxation could reach up to 50 percent, as is the case in California.
And would such taxation apply to legitimate sports broadcast organizations, celebrities, sports personalities and media? In the case of news outlets, their attempts to expand their reach often result in greater online income as a byproduct. Beyond that, international sports celebrities like Alex Eala, Manny Pacquiao and even local sports personalities have such large followings that generating income is almost secondary when it happens. And again, who would you tax? The athlete, the company whose products they endorse, the go-between who brokered their agreement or all of them?
The bottomline is that there would be too many problems in regulating and then taxing online content creation, especially since the flow of content is constant, extremely popular and easily passed around. Nowadays, you could be faceless, unheard, unidentified and still be able to earn off someone else’s hard work. Sadly, opportunism goes beyond sports, perpetuated by thoughtless, inconsiderate, unimaginative copycats.