France Panel Backs Crypto Exit Tax, Then Rejects Budget 31-3

31 to 3. That was the vote by which France's National Assembly Finance Committee rejected the entire revenue section of the 2027 budget bill on Oct. 9, 2026, two days after the same committee approved amendments taxing crypto-to-stablecoin swaps and expanding the country's exit tax to wealthy crypto holders. The rejection is procedural, not a verdict on the crypto measures themselves, but it means neither provision automatically carries into the text the full Assembly debates starting Oct. 13.

What the committee approved, and when

France's Finance Committee adopted an amendment treating swaps of crypto into MiCA-regulated stablecoins as taxable sales from Jan. 1, 2027, and another extending the exit tax to crypto held by households worth more than €800,000. Amendment I-CF1826, submitted by French MP Nicolas Sansu and adopted Wednesday, would make crypto conversions into fiat-pegged stablecoins taxable events from Jan. 1, 2027 — Oct. 7, according to committee records relayed by Cointelegraph and PANews.

The stablecoin amendment, filed by Nicolas Sansu of the left-wing GDR group and 16 co-signers, goes after what the authors call "a hole in the legislation." Today, swapping Bitcoin for a stablecoin triggers no tax in France, because the state only collects when gains are sold for regular money or spent. The text covers the electronic money tokens defined under MiCA, the EU's crypto rulebook, a category that includes most stablecoins tied to a single currency. From Jan. 1, 2027, swapping into one would count as a sale, with the gain measured against what the holder originally paid.

The amendment does not set a new rate. It names no rate and defers to France's flat tax, which rose to 31.4% on Jan. 1 after the 2026 social-security financing law lifted the social-charge portion from 17.2% to 18.6%. The authors say stablecoins can be perfectly ordinary investment vehicles, since they can pay for things at crypto service providers or buy other tokens, so the deferral on swapping into them is unjustified and lets the gain escape the flat tax.

A day later, the committee took up the exit tax. A second amendment from Sansu would extend France's exit tax to crypto. That is a levy on gains you have not cashed in yet, charged when you move your tax residence abroad. It would apply when a tax household's combined crypto, including holdings kept through custodians, is worth more than €800,000 and the taxpayer was a French tax resident for at least six of the previous 10 years, for moves from Jan. 1, 2027. Swaps between cryptocurrencies with no cash component would not count as sales for exit-tax purposes, and taxpayers would have to attach a statement of all crypto held on the date of the move, including assets held abroad or in self-custody.

MP Daniel Labaronne's Amendment I-CCF798, also adopted Wednesday, would allow investors to carry forward realized crypto losses for 10 years. In the same session, the proposal to extend the personal wealth tax to crypto assets was rejected, while some self-custody wallet declaration and platform penalty measures are still under review, according to PANews's account of the committee's work. Separately, an amendment submitted by Paul Midy to reduce taxation was ruled inadmissible under Article 40 of the French Constitution, which bars measures that reduce public revenue, while a separate proposal would require taxpayers to declare self-hosted wallets holding at least €100,000 in crypto assets, with noncompliance risking a fine of up to €10,000, per TokenPost.

Then the committee sank the budget's revenue section

On Friday the committee rejected the budget's entire revenue section by 31 votes to 3, so the full Assembly starts from the government's original text, without the crypto amendments. That is a reset of the base text, not a rejection of the crypto measures on their merits — committee-adopted amendments wiped out this way must be refiled for the floor to have any chance of becoming law. The floor debate on the budget's revenue section opens Oct. 13, with a formal vote scheduled for Oct. 20. If the measures return and survive, the stablecoin and exit-tax rules would apply from Jan. 1, 2027.

Key figures

What's established, what isn't, and why the distinction matters

Every outlet reviewed for this article describes these as committee-stage amendments to a budget bill still in first reading, not enacted law. That distinction matters because the Finance Committee's own rejection of the revenue section on Oct. 9 strips the crypto amendments from the base text — their survival now depends on lawmakers refiling them and winning votes on the floor, not on anything the committee already decided.

The stablecoin provision is conceptually significant even though it creates no new tax rate: it would make a crypto-to-stablecoin swap a taxable disposal under France's existing 31.4% flat tax, closing a deferral that currently lets gains go untaxed until an investor converts to euros or spends the funds. Readers holding crypto through French tax residency should note this changes the trigger for taxation, not the rate applied once triggered.

The exit-tax expansion is narrower by design. It only reaches tax households with combined crypto holdings above €800,000 who have been French residents for at least six of the past ten years and who relocate abroad from Jan. 1, 2027 onward; it does not touch ordinary domestic sales or holders below that threshold. The proposal targets unrealized gains associated with qualifying crypto holdings exceeding €800,000, subject to the conditions specified in the amendment.

Two items remain genuinely unresolved and should not be treated as settled: the self-custody wallet disclosure requirement and its penalty were still pending when the committee finished its work, and a separate push to fold crypto into France's core wealth tax failed in committee this round. That is a different outcome from the one that already took effect in legislative terms last year — Amendment No. I-3379 to France's 2026 Finance Bill, passed by a narrow 163-150 vote, added digital assets to a new "unproductive wealth" tax base alongside gold, yachts, and classic cars, imposing a flat 1% annual tax on net wealth exceeding €2 million. That levy and this year's stalled exit-tax and stablecoin amendments are separate measures, in separate bills, at separate stages.

Context on the money at stake: Chainalysis estimated that the country generated $9.4 billion in potentially taxable digital asset activity during 2025, a figure crypto.news reported in September tied to France's parallel push to enforce the EU's DAC8 crypto-reporting directive. That estimate describes activity Chainalysis judged potentially taxable under existing rules, not projected revenue from the new amendments, which remain unadopted.

What happens next

The floor debate on the budget's revenue section opens Oct. 13, with a formal vote scheduled for Oct. 20. Backers of the stablecoin and exit-tax amendments must refile them for that debate, since committee adoption did not survive the revenue section's rejection. The National Assembly is scheduled to review the amendments from Oct. 13 to Oct. 19 ahead of that vote. Until lawmakers cast that vote, the Jan. 1, 2027 effective dates attached to both crypto measures remain conditional on passage.