France's National Assembly Finance Committee this week adopted amendments that would tax crypto holders who swap into stablecoins—tokens pegged to a single official currency, such as the dollar or the euro—and extend the country's exit tax to wealthy holders who move their tax residence abroad.

The votes may not matter much yet: on Friday, Oct. 9, the committee rejected the budget's entire revenue section by 31 votes to 3, meaning the full Assembly will start its debate from the government's original text, without the crypto amendments. Their backers would have to table the measures again for the floor debate that begins Oct. 13. Neither measure is law, and both would still have to clear the rest of the legislative process.

In total, the panel approved three crypto-related amendments: the stablecoin swap rule, the exit-tax extension, and a loss carryforward measure. Read together, they aim to bring crypto's tax treatment closer to rules shares already face—the exit-tax threshold mirrors the one used for equities, and the loss measure would match the carryforward stock investors already get.

Stablecoin swaps treated as taxable sales

The stablecoin amendment, filed by Nicolas Sansu of the left-wing GDR group and 16 co-signers, targets 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 official currency. The MiCA scope also reaches into a market already adjusting to the EU rulebook: Coinbase said in October 2024 that it would delist stablecoins that fail to comply with MiCA for European customers by Dec. 30, pointing users toward compliant coins such as USDC and EURC. From Jan. 1, 2027, swapping into one would count as a sale, with the gain measured against what the holder originally paid.

The amendment 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 insist they are not creating a new burden, only applying existing law to a case it missed.

In the authors' view, stablecoins can be perfectly ordinary investment vehicles, since they can be used to pay for things at crypto service providers or to buy other tokens. The deferral on swapping into them is therefore unjustified, they argue, and lets gains escape the flat tax entirely.

Exit tax extended to crypto

A second amendment from Sansu would extend France's exit tax to crypto—a levy on gains a taxpayer has not yet cashed in, charged when they move their 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.

The threshold matches the one already used for shares, and the payment deferral rules are borrowed from the stock regime. Swaps between cryptocurrencies with no cash component would not count as sales for exit-tax purposes. 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—wallets they control themselves without an exchange.

The authors argue that crypto held directly escapes the exit tax today, while shares of the same value do not, and they flag how easily digital assets can be moved across borders by their holders.

Loss carryforward and earlier context

Daniel Labaronne's loss amendment also won committee approval. It would let investors carry crypto losses forward for 10 years to offset future gains, as they already can with stocks. Under today's rules, unused crypto losses cannot be carried over at all.

The Assembly previously adopted another crypto-inclusive tax in first reading in late October 2025, voting 163-150 for an amendment creating a 1% annual levy on "unproductive" wealth above €2 million that lumped digital assets in with gold and yachts. Attorney Burçak Ünsal told Decrypt that taxing early token holders was potentially "economically unjust."

The floor debate on the budget's revenue section opens Oct. 13, with a formal vote on the section scheduled for Oct. 20. If the measures return and survive that process, the stablecoin and exit-tax rules would apply from Jan. 1, 2027.