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News has broken today (Tuesday) that households across the UK could be forced to pay for a £180 TV licence in order to watch Amazon Prime and Netflix.

The Express has today reported how new plans could be drawn up for all streaming subscribers such as those who watch Netflix or Amazon Prime Video in a radical shake up of BBC funding.

But there are already some circumstances in which Netflix, Amazon Prime and even YouTube viewers need to pay for a TV licence or face fines and prosecution from TV Licensing.

Recently, Amazon Prime has launched a series of live sports broadcasts, including coverage of the Champions League. Amazon Prime Video also has live tennis and UFC fights as well as rugby and wresling.

What's more, Amazon Prime Video now has an entire 'Live TV' section, which offers channels like Hell's Kitchen which, as you might expect, offers back to back episodes of Gordon Ramsay's cooking programme, as well as a Mr Bean Channel, CNN, Red Bull TV, EuroNews and all sorts of other hidden gems.

Netflix, too, has branched out into live broadcast, including boxing, wrestling and concerts, and contains a Live Events section. While YouTube, of course, also offers live streams and broadcasts of everything from gaming content to news, sports and music.

Unfortunately, TV licence rules make clear that you do in fact need a TV licence to watch any of this live content or these subscription services' events and channels as they're being broadcast (i.e. not on catch up).

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TV Licensing says in its online guidance: "If you're watching TV showing live on Amazon Prime, you need to be covered by a TV licence. You don't need a TV licence if you're only watching on demand programmes on Amazon Prime.

"You don't need a TV licence to watch on demand programmes on Disney Plus.

"If you are watching a TV programme live on YouTube, you need to be covered by a TV licence.

"A licence is not required to view user generated content, clips and videos on YouTube. This includes live streamed content that is not part of a television broadcast. Or being broadcast at the same time by other means."

TV Licensing goes on to warn: "You could be prosecuted if we find that you have been watching, recording or downloading programmes illegally. The maximum penalty is a £1,000 fine plus any legal costs and/or compensation you may be ordered to pay. The maximum fine is £2,000 in Guernsey.

"We have a database of approximately 31 million licensed and unlicensed addresses. This tells us if your address has a TV licence.

"All our visiting officers have access to this database. This means they can check if you have a licence or not.

"If you tell us that you do not need a TV licence, our officers may still visit you to confirm this.

"We also have a fleet of detector vans that can detect the use of TV receiving equipment at specifically targeted addresses within minutes."

A TV licence is a legal requirement if you do any of these:

• watch or record live TV on any channel via any TV service (such as Sky, Virgin, Freeview, Freesat)

• watch live content on streaming services (e.g. ITVX, Channel 4, YouTube, Amazon Prime Video, Now, Sky Go)

• use BBC iPlayer at all