Facebook Australia profit falls, despite higher revenue

An amended tax bill has offset higher revenues at Facebook, pushing the social media giant’s Australian profits lower.

New filings for the group show Facebook Australia recorded $1.26 billion of advertising sales for 2022, but $1.03 billion of that was classified as reseller expense, leaving reported revenue at just $224.61m.

The group said net profit fell from $36.9m to $34.7m, after its tax bill increased to $42.8m from $24.3m.

Facebook said an additional tax expense of $9.2m was recognised from amended assessments of the 2018 to 2021 financial years flowing from “an ongoing review of the company’s own tax positions”.

“These amendments were based on new information and facts that formed during 2022,” it said.

The filings came to light just days after the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission disclosed that Facebook’s parent company, Meta, had “a significant degree of market power” and faced weak competition from rivals such as Twitter, TikTok and Snapchat.

The report from the ACCC’s digitals platforms inquiry found that Meta’s dominance was aided by high barriers to entry, saying the group had strong advertising products and would use funds to “invest in replicating features of its rivals, or to buy out competitive threats”.