French Finance Committee Votes to Tax Crypto-to-Stablecoin Swaps and Wealthy Exits

France’s National Assembly Finance Committee has voted in favor of a series of high-stakes tax amendments that would fundamentally alter how digital assets are treated under French law. The proposed measures aim to close long-standing legislative gaps by taxing cryptocurrency holders when they swap their tokens into stablecoins, while also establishing an exit tax for wealthy digital asset holders who relocate abroad.

The committee’s recent decisions mark a significant, albeit preliminary, escalation in France’s ongoing efforts to integrate cryptocurrencies into its broader fiscal framework. However, the legislative path forward remains uncertain. Following the committee’s votes, the broader finance panel rejected the entire revenue section of the national budget bill by a vote of 31 to 3. Consequently, when the full National Assembly opens debate on the budget’s revenue portion, it will start directly from the government’s original text, which does not currently include these specific cryptocurrency amendments.

Because these localized committee votes do not automatically carry over to the official government text, the original backers of the crypto amendments will need to formally table them again if they hope to influence the upcoming floor debates. Neither measure has achieved the status of law, and both must navigate a rigorous legislative journey through the French parliament before any changes can take effect. If proponents successfully reintroduce the measures and they survive the legislative gauntlet, the new stablecoin and exit tax rules would be slated to apply starting January 1, 2027.

Closing the Stablecoin "Loophole"

The stablecoin amendment was filed by Nicolas Sansu, a representative of the left-wing GDR group, alongside 16 co-signers. The proposal is explicitly designed to target what its authors describe as a notable hole in current French tax legislation. Under existing rules, swapping a volatile cryptocurrency like Bitcoin for a stablecoin—a token pegged explicitly to a single official fiat currency such as the U.S. dollar or the euro—does not trigger a taxable event in France. Currently, the French state only collects capital gains taxes when digital assets are formally sold for traditional fiat currency or spent directly on goods and services.

The newly proposed text specifically covers electronic-money tokens as defined under the Markets in Crypto-Assets framework, commonly known as MiCA. This comprehensive European Union rulebook regulates digital assets across member states, encompassing the vast majority of mainstream, single-currency-backed stablecoins. Under the committee’s proposal, any swap from a volatile crypto asset into a qualifying stablecoin as of January 1, 2027, would be legally reclassified as a sale. The resulting capital gain would then be measured precisely against the original purchase price paid by the holder.

While the amendment itself does not name a specific tax rate, it implicitly defers to France’s standard flat tax on capital gains. This rate recently rose to 31.4% on January 1, following the enactment of the 2026 social-security financing law, which lifted the social-charge portion of the levy from 17.2% to 18.6%. The authors of the amendment have strongly insisted that they are not attempting to create a new economic burden for investors, but rather are merely applying existing tax law to a transaction type that previous legislation inadvertently missed.

In their explanatory notes, the authors argued that stablecoins function as perfectly ordinary investment vehicles capable of preserving wealth, facilitating purchases at crypto service providers, or acting as capital to buy other digital tokens. Therefore, they contend, the current tax deferral granted upon swapping into stablecoins is entirely unjustified, as it allows substantial capital gains to escape the standard flat tax framework indefinitely.

Expanding the Exit Tax to Digital Assets

In addition to the stablecoin rule, a second amendment filed by Sansu seeks to extend France’s traditional exit tax regime directly into the cryptocurrency ecosystem. An exit tax is a unique fiscal mechanism designed to levy taxes on unrealized capital gains—gains that an investor has not yet cashed in—triggered specifically when a taxpayer officially moves their tax residence to a foreign country.

Under the proposed rules, this exit tax would apply to any tax household whose combined cryptocurrency portfolio, including holdings managed through institutional custodians, exceeds €800,000 in total value. Furthermore, the taxpayer would need to have been a registered French tax resident for at least six of the preceding ten years for the move to trigger the tax, with provisions set to apply to relocations occurring from January 1, 2027. This financial threshold mirrors the exact criteria already enforced for traditional corporate shares and equities, and the associated payment deferral rules are directly borrowed from France’s established stock taxation regime.

Importantly, the amendment clarifies that routine swaps between different cryptocurrencies that contain no fiat currency component would not be treated as sales for the purposes of the exit tax. However, departing taxpayers would be legally required to attach a comprehensive statement detailing all cryptocurrency held on the exact date of their relocation. This requirement would encompass assets stored abroad as well as those held in self-custody wallets—digital storage solutions controlled directly by the user without the intermediation of a centralized exchange.

The legislation’s proponents argue that holding cryptocurrency directly currently allows wealthy individuals to bypass exit taxation entirely, whereas individuals holding traditional shares of equivalent value face immediate scrutiny upon leaving the country. They have repeatedly highlighted how easily digital assets can be transferred across international borders, making a specialized exit tax a necessary tool to prevent capital flight.

Extending Loss Carryforwards and Broader Tax Pressures

Amid the debate over stablecoins and exit taxes, a separate amendment proposed by Daniel Labaronne also secured approval from the finance committee. This provision would allow digital asset investors to carry their cryptocurrency losses forward for a period of up to 10 years to offset future capital gains. Under current French tax law, unused crypto losses cannot be carried over from year to year, a restriction that critics argue places digital asset investors at a distinct disadvantage compared to traditional equity traders, who already enjoy loss-carryforward privileges.

These crypto-related proposals arrive against a backdrop of increasing fiscal scrutiny of digital wealth in France. In late October 2025, the National Assembly adopted another crypto-inclusive tax measure during its first reading, voting 163 to 150 in favor of an amendment that established a 1% annual levy on "unproductive" wealth exceeding €2 million. That measure explicitly lumped digital assets into the same restrictive category as physical gold and luxury yachts.

The inclusion of digital assets in such wealth taxes has drawn sharp criticism from legal and financial experts. Attorney Burâck Ünsal previously told Decrypt that taxing early token holders through broad wealth measures is potentially "economically unjust," given the inherent volatility and evolving nature of the asset class.

Meanwhile, traditional financial infrastructure continues to adapt to overlapping regulatory pressures, such as the European Union’s MiCA framework. In October 2024, major cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase announced plans to delist stablecoins that failed to achieve regulatory compliance under MiCA for European customers by December 30, actively steering users toward fully compliant alternative tokens such as USDC and EURC.

The ongoing legislative battle over France’s national budget will reach a critical juncture as the floor debate on the revenue section officially opens on October 13, culminating in a formal parliamentary vote scheduled for October 20. If the controversial cryptocurrency amendments manage to find their way back into the debate and successfully survive the legislative process, the proposed stablecoin and exit tax regulations will be implemented at the start of 2027.