French Lawmakers Back Stablecoin Swap Tax by Just One Vote

French lawmakers voted by a single-vote margin on Friday to make swapping cryptocurrency for stablecoins a taxable event, according to the National Assembly's record of the vote.

Of the 100 deputies who took part, 38 backed amendment I-3898 to the 2027 budget, 37 opposed it and 25 abstained. That left 75 votes cast, putting the measure exactly at the 38 needed for a majority.

French holders can currently move between cryptocurrencies without owing tax, as long as no euros change hands, with the bill only coming due when they cash out or spend. The amendment carves out swaps that end in an electronic money token under MiCA, the EU's crypto rulebook, which covers stablecoins pegged to a single official currency.

From January 1, 2027, those swaps would count as sales. The gain would be the value of the stablecoins received minus what the holder paid for the coins given up, taxed under France's flat tax, which rose from 30% to 31.4% after France's 2026 social security financing law lifted social charges on capital income from 17.2% to 18.6%.

The text also rewrites how that cost is worked out. Instead of a single figure for the whole portfolio, each coin sold would carry its own purchase price, averaged where the same coin was bought more than once. For holdings bought before 2027, investors would make a one-off, irrevocable choice between documenting the actual cost of each asset and spreading their portfolio's total cost across what they hold on December 31, 2026.

The amendment's authors, led by Nicolas Sansu of the left-wing GDR group, argue that stablecoins can be "entirely conventional investment vehicles," used to pay crypto service providers or buy other tokens, and that gains moved into them escape the flat tax through "a hole in the legislation." The UK and Italy have already legislated along the same lines, they say.

The government opposed the measure. Public Accounts Minister David Amiel asked for it to be withdrawn, arguing that stablecoins first needed a legal definition and that the state had to be able to trace reallocations within portfolios, CoinDesk reported.

The Assembly's finance committee had already backed Sansu's stablecoin amendment earlier this month, along with another of his proposals extending France's exit tax to crypto held by households worth more than €800,000. It then rejected the budget's entire revenue section by 31 votes to 3, sending the floor debate back to the government's original text and forcing the stablecoin measure to be tabled again.

A separate committee amendment would require holders to declare self-custodied crypto worth €100,000 ($112,000) or more at year-end, with fines of up to €10,000 for failing to do so. That drew a backlash from crypto figures, who argued that collecting the data would put holders at risk in a country that has seen a string of crypto kidnappings, including the 2025 abduction and mutilation of Ledger co-founder David Balland.

None of the measures is law yet. The Assembly is due to vote on the full revenue section on Tuesday, after which the budget passes to the Senate.