Elon Musk's X modifies eligibility requirements for ad revenue sharing programme

Elon Musk-owned X (formerly Twitter) has announced a change in the eligibility requirements for its advertisement revenue sharing programme. Meant to provide content creators on X a way to earn from the content they post on the microblogging platform, the payout programme previously required a creator with a verified account and at least 500 followers to garner 15 million impressions in the last three months to be eligible for getting a share in the revenue. However, the company has updated this requirement, bringing the threshold of number of impressions down to 5 million in the last three months to be eligible. 

"We’ve also lowered the minimum payout threshold from $50 to $10," the company's official support account announced in a tweet. 

Now, even more people can get paid to post!

We’ve lowered the eligibility threshold for ads revenue sharing from 15M to 5M impressions within the last 3 months. We’ve also lowered the minimum payout threshold from $50 to $10.

Sign up for a Premium subscription to get access.

— Support (@Support) August 10, 2023

Meanwhile, in India, experts said that remuneration that a creator receives from X's ad revenue sharing programme would be subject to 18 per cent tax under the GST law due to it being categorised as supply. This would only happen, however, if total income from various services provided by the individual, such as rental income, interest from a bank FD, and other professional services exceeds the threshold of Rs 20 lakh a year. 

They clarified that in order to calculate the threshold of Rs 20 lakh, revenues that are otherwise exempt from the GST would also be included, even as GST would not be taxable on such exempt incomes. 

Currently, individuals and entities earning revenues or income from services exceeding Rs 20 lakh is liable to take Goods and Services Tax registration. 

AMRG & Associates Senior Partner Rajat Mohan explained this by giving the example of an individual who earns an interest income from banks to the tune of Rs 20 lakh a year, neither paying GST nor needing to take GST registration. If such an individual then generates additional taxable income of Rs 1 lakh from Twitter, etc, he would need to get a GST registration and then pay GST levied at a rate of 18 per cent on the amount exceeding Rs 20 lakh, ie, Rs 1 lakh.