France Votes to Tax Stablecoin Swaps at 31.4%

France’s National Assembly has voted 38 to 37, with 25 abstentions, to end the tax deferral French crypto investors currently enjoy when swapping cryptocurrency for stablecoins, a step that would bring those trades under the country’s 31.4% capital gains levy from Jan. 1, 2027.

The vote on Oct. 16 adopted amendment I-3898 to the 2027 budget bill, according to the Assembly’s roll-call for the vote. It advances a proposal the Assembly’s finance committee approved earlier in the budget process.

Under current French tax rules, exchanges of one cryptocurrency for another without an additional cash payment generally do not trigger a taxable event. Tax is deferred until the investor sells into fiat. The amendment removes that deferral when investors receive e-money tokens, the stablecoin category defined by the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets framework. It also drops France’s portfolio-wide method for working out capital gains: the cost of each asset actually sold would be figured individually, using the average of the prices the investor paid for the units offloaded.

The change is not law yet. It remains subject to the budget’s remaining parliamentary stages, where it could still be amended or removed. Public Accounts Minister David Amiel raised questions about how the measure would work and asked for it to be withdrawn. “We first need to define stablecoins, then ensure our ability to monitor and trace reallocations within a portfolio of assets,” Amiel said in remarks to the Assembly. Finance committee rapporteur general Philippe Juvin spoke for keeping the deferral, arguing crypto’s swings in value made it necessary.

Francois Volpoet, Chainalysis’ regional sales director for France, warned the measure risks pushing French investors toward on-chain protocols, trades settled directly between wallets, and platforms in countries that sit outside the international system for sharing tax information.

The proposal would make France one of the first major EU countries to treat crypto-to-stablecoin swaps as taxable disposals, a change that lands as EU regulators tighten their grip on non-compliant stablecoins across the bloc.