France's Flat Tax Hides Three Different Tax Regimes for Tokenized Stocks and Crypto Derivatives

From 1 January 2026, France's flat tax on capital income rises from 30% to 31.4%. The headline figure stays uniform across crypto-assets, securities and financial contracts, keeping the 12.8% income tax component unchanged while lifting social contributions from 17.2% to 18.6%. For investors moving between tokenized stocks, spot crypto and derivatives, that uniformity can be misleading. "Après tout, peu importe la case, c'est le même pourcentage !" sums up the assumption many make — and it is wrong on the detail, if not the rate.

French tax law splits these instruments into three distinct categories, each governed by its own article of the Code général des impôts, with different rules on exemptions, loss offsetting and penalties.

Three categories, three rulebooks

Crypto-assets fall under Article 150 VH bis. Gains below 305 euros in total annual disposals are exempt, but losses that go unused within the year cannot be carried forward — they are simply lost. Securities, or valeurs mobilières, are taxed under Article 150-0 A and benefit from a far more generous regime: losses can offset gains of the same nature not just in the current year but across the following ten years. Financial contracts, including derivatives, sit under Article 150 ter, with a punitive twist — the rate jumps to 50% when the counterparty or account holder is based in a non-cooperative state or territory, under Article 238-0 A of the CGI.

The distinction matters because tokenized products increasingly blur these lines. Kraken's xStocks product tokenizes equity exposure in a form that can fall under the securities regime. OKX's X-Perps, marketed as perpetual contracts, in fact expire after five years, a structural detail that pushes them toward the financial contracts category rather than the crypto-asset one. Kraken has also moved to introduce a proxy voting mechanism for tokenized stock holders, effective August 2026, a feature more commonly associated with traditional shareholder rights than with crypto-asset ownership.

New declaration and enforcement rules

Two pieces of French legislation tighten the compliance picture further. A law dated 25 June 2026 restricts the crypto tax regime to MiCA-compliant crypto-assets for sales made from 1 January 2026 onward, and separately creates a new NFT tax regime while extending foreign asset declaration obligations. Penalties for non-compliance are significant: up to 1,500 euros for each undeclared foreign digital asset wallet, and an 80% surcharge on tax reassessments linked to omitted assets.

Enforcement is also becoming more automated. The EU's DAC8 directive, effective from 1 January 2026, requires platforms to automatically transmit user data to tax authorities, reducing the scope for underreporting across member states.

On the paperwork side, crypto-asset gains are declared via Form 2086, while securities and derivatives gains go on Annexe 2074. Foreign bank and securities accounts require Form 3916, and foreign digital asset wallets have their own dedicated Form 3916-bis. For investors holding a mix of tokenized stocks, spot crypto and derivatives, correctly sorting instruments into the right category — before filing — now carries real financial consequences that the shared 31.4% rate does nothing to simplify.