France’s National Assembly Finance Committee has backed a stablecoin swap tax, then rejected the budget’s revenue section.
The Finance Committee of France’s National Assembly has approved amendments that would tax crypto holders who swap into stablecoins and apply an exit tax to wealthy crypto holders who move abroad. However, the committee then rejected the budget’s entire revenue section by 31 votes to 3, meaning the full Assembly will work from the government’s original text, without the crypto amendments. Their backers would need to table them again for the floor debate, with a formal vote scheduled for 20 October 2026. Neither measure has become law, and both would still need to pass the remaining stages of the legislative process.
Stablecoin swaps treated as disposals
The stablecoin amendment, filed by Nicolas Sansu of the left-wing GDR group and 16 co-signers, targets what its authors describe as a gap in the legislation. Swapping Bitcoin for a stablecoin currently triggers no tax in France, as tax is only due when gains are converted into fiat currency or spent. The amendment covers electronic money tokens as defined under MiCA, the EU’s crypto framework, a category that includes most stablecoins tied to a single currency. From 1 January 2027, swapping into such a token would count as a sale, with the gain calculated against the holder’s original purchase price.
The amendment does not set a new rate but applies France’s flat tax, which rose to 31.4% on 1 January 2026 after the 2026 social security financing law raised the social charge portion from 17.2% to 18.6%. The authors argue they are not creating a new tax burden but applying existing rules to a case the law did not cover. Since stablecoins can be used to pay at crypto service providers or to buy other tokens, the authors consider them ordinary investment vehicles, and argue that deferring tax on swaps into them allows gains to escape the flat tax.
Exit tax and loss carry-forward
A second amendment from Sansu would extend France’s exit tax, a levy on unrealised gains charged when a taxpayer moves their tax residence abroad, to crypto. From 1 January 2027, it would apply where a tax household’s crypto holdings exceed EUR 800,000 and the taxpayer was a French tax resident for at least six of the previous ten years, mirroring the threshold and deferral rules for shares. Crypto-to-crypto swaps without a cash component would not count as sales, but taxpayers would have to declare all crypto held on the date of the move, including assets held abroad or in self-custody. The authors note that crypto held directly currently escapes the exit tax, while shares of the same value do not.
The committee also approved an amendment from Daniel Labaronne allowing investors to carry crypto losses forward for ten years to offset future gains, as is already possible for stocks. The votes follow the Assembly’s adoption, in first reading in late October 2025, of an amendment creating a 1% annual levy on ‘unproductive’ wealth above EUR 2 million that included digital assets alongside gold and yachts. If the new measures are reintroduced and adopted, the stablecoin and exit tax rules would take effect from 1 January 2027.
