UK plans to extend BBC licence fee to Netflix and YouTube, White Paper before Christmas would tax streamers to fund a broadcaster audiences are leaving, licence count fell by more than half a million last year

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Anyone in Britain who watches television already pays the BBC licence fee — £180 since April — whether or not they watch the BBC. Under plans reported by The Independent, that obligation would extend to streaming platforms such as Netflix, Amazon, Disney+ and YouTube, closing the escape route opened by phones, tablets and laptops. A White Paper on the BBC's charter renewal is expected before Christmas, setting out how the corporation will be governed, regulated and funded from 2028.

The arrangement has already been labelled the 'YouTube tax', after the largest online video platform in the UK. The logic is arithmetic rather than conspiratorial: the BBC's licence fee income has fallen by more than £1 billion in real terms over the past decade, and the 2026 annual report showed TV licences dropped by more than half a million in the 2025/26 financial year alone. The audience is migrating to services that don't pay for the BBC, so the state proposes to follow the audience and collect there instead.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport says the current model is 'outdated and no longer fit for purpose', notes that a household levy — charging every home regardless of use — would be difficult to introduce, and suggests the fee itself could be reduced from £180. The BBC agrees the model is outdated, which is a different claim than agreeing it is underfunded. BBC director-general Matt Brittin said last month he wants BBC content on Netflix, YouTube, TikTok, Spotify and Instagram, 'everywhere where audiences are', and has floated the household levy himself.

The question the White Paper will answer is not how the BBC survives but who is compelled to carry it. A Netflix subscriber who has never opened iPlayer would, under the reported plan, fund a public broadcaster whose own audience shrinks annually — while the platforms doing the actual attracting of viewers keep their margins untouched. The DCMS says any new model must be 'fair to all those that are paying it'. The half a million households that stopped paying last year have already cast their vote.