France's Finance Committee Backs Tax on Crypto-to-Stablecoin Swaps

The Finance Committee of France's National Assembly on Wednesday, Oct. 7, adopted an amendment to the 2027 budget bill that would make swaps from cryptocurrencies into stablecoins a taxable event from Jan. 1, 2027. Under current French rules, tax is due only when crypto is converted into euros or another fiat currency, or spent on goods and services; gains are subject to the 30% flat tax known as the PFU. Amendment I-CF1826 was tabled by Nicolas Sansu, a deputy from the communist GDR group, and the parliament's website lists it as adopted on Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2026.

Details

The explanatory note calls the current deferral on stablecoin swaps a loophole: fiat-pegged stablecoins, the authors argue, are an ordinary investment vehicle used to pay and to buy other tokens, so gains should be taxed as on a cash-out to euros. The note also claims the U.K. and Italy have already legislated along these lines. Gains would be the sale price minus the acquisition cost, using a weighted average when the same token was bought at different prices. For coins acquired before 2027, investors could either document the actual cost of each purchase or make a one-time, irrevocable election to spread the portfolio's total cost as of Dec. 31, 2026, across holdings in proportion to their value. According to Cryptoast, only stablecoins authorized under the EU's MiCA regime are covered, so a swap into USDT or DAI would fall outside the rule.

The committee adopted two more crypto amendments. I-CF798, from Daniel Labaronne of the presidential EPR group, would let investors carry crypto losses forward for 10 years, as they already can with securities; today losses can only offset gains in the same year. I-CF1822, also from Sansu and adopted on Thursday, Oct. 8, would extend the exit tax to unrealized gains on crypto portfolios above €800,000 when a taxpayer moves their residence abroad. Proposals to fold crypto into a wealth tax and to raise the income-tax component of the PFU from 12.8% to 15.8% were rejected, Cointelegraph and Cryptoast report. For scale, crypto.news notes that French taxpayers declared €368 million in crypto gains for 2024 across roughly 24,000 returns.

What it means for the market

This is a committee vote, not a law. The budget still goes to the full National Assembly, with floor debate starting the week of Oct. 12, then to the Senate, with final adoption due by Dec. 31. As Clubic notes, the 2025 and 2026 budgets were pushed through under Article 49.3 of the constitution, which lets the government decide which amendments survive. Faustine Fleuret, head of public affairs at the Morpho protocol, called the adoption "a very bad start" but urged the industry not to panic too early.

The precedent matters more than the rate: the euro zone's second-largest economy wants to treat a move into stablecoins as realizing a gain. If it passes, traders in France would owe tax on every rotation from bitcoin into USDC, and the MiCA link would add an argument for the unauthorized stablecoins the EU is pushing out through ESMA. Greece also unveiled a crypto tax this week, proposing 10% on gains while leaving crypto-to-crypto swaps untaxed.