TikTok’s UK arm has raised the amount set aside for potential legal battles and regulatory investigations to more than $1 billion, in the same year that the business swung to profit and recorded its first annual operating profit.
Provisions and contingent liabilities for “legal and related matters” rose by more than 13 per cent to about $1.05 billion for the year ending December 2025, according to the filings for TikTok Information Technologies UK, whose operations also cover Europe, Latin America and Africa.
TikTok said it recorded liabilities when it was “probable” they would be incurred and total losses could be “reasonably estimated”, adding that the outcome of any proceedings was “inherently uncertain”.
The latest accounts show the increase was driven substantially by ongoing cases and appeals involving Ireland’s data watchdog, the Data Protection Commission. Last year the commission imposed a fine of 530 million euros on the company for failing to guarantee that data from European users sent to China would not be accessed by the Chinese government. It has also previously fined the technology group for breaking EU data laws in its handling of children’s accounts, such as by putting 13 to 17-year-olds on a public setting by default.
Crucially for anyone reading the numbers as a measure of TikTok’s exposure, the amounts set aside would not yet encompass the UK government’s social media ban for under-16s, which comes into effect in the spring and which industry groups have argued is unworkable. Nor do they cover Ofcom’s investigation into whether TikTok is failing to protect children from harmful content, which was announced in July and remains at an “early stage”.
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