(Ottawa) A Federal Court judge has confirmed that far-right media outlet Rebel News is ineligible for journalism tax credits because it does not produce enough original content.
Rebel News had applied in May 2021 to be designated as a “qualified Canadian journalism organization” in order to benefit from the Canadian journalism labour tax credit.
But his application was rejected by the Canada Revenue Agency, which concluded that “original news” accounted for less than 1% of his content.
The media outlet sought judicial review in Federal Court, but in a ruling released Wednesday, Justice Ann Marie McDonald found the revenue agency’s decision was reasonable.
Judge McDonald points out that the agency evaluated 423 Rebel News reports and found that only 10 of them were original.
She also points out that the rest of the content was not fact-based and did not include multiple perspectives, or was curated content or material rewritten from other sources.
The official designation of “qualified Canadian journalism organization” allows news media to claim the Canadian journalism labour tax credit. It also allows subscribers of these media to claim the digital news subscription tax credit.