An amendment to France's 2027 budget bill would make conversions into regulated stablecoins a taxable event, a change that would hit the very tokens MiCA was designed to bring into the regulatory fold while leaving Tether's USDT outside its scope.
The amendment, tabled by deputy Nicolas Sansu of the GDR group, targets stablecoins approved under MiCA as electronic money tokens, including Circle's USDC and Société Générale Forge's EURCV. Under current French rules, tax applies only when crypto is converted back to euros or used to pay for goods and services; crypto-to-crypto swaps benefit from a tax deferral mechanism known as sursis d'imposition. Sansu's amendment would strip MiCA-approved stablecoins of their digital asset status for tax purposes, treating a conversion into them as equivalent to cashing out.
Because USDT has not sought the same MiCA authorisation, it would retain its digital asset status and the tax deferral advantage that comes with it. The measure would therefore create a situation in which the least regulated major stablecoin keeps a tax benefit denied to its MiCA-compliant competitors.
An administrative burden on top of the tax hit
France calculates capital gains on crypto based on the total value of a holder's portfolio at the exact moment of each taxable event. Treating every stablecoin conversion as such an event would require investors to reconstruct an inventory of every position, on every platform, at the precise time of each swap. The current flat tax rate, the prélèvement forfaitaire unique, stands at 31.4% and today applies only on conversion back to euros.
François Volpoet, director of Chainalysis France, warned that the measure risks driving activity away from platforms that report to French authorities. Chainalysis expects users to migrate toward non-EU platforms or decentralised finance protocols, both of which would reduce the visibility tax authorities currently have over crypto transactions. That visibility has been building under the EU's DAC8 directive, which requires approved crypto service providers to report client operations annually, and under the MiCA-based licensing regime that replaced France's old PSAN framework when its transition period ended at the end of June.
Smaller French platforms have already absorbed compliance costs running into the hundreds of thousands of euros to meet MiCA requirements. An additional tax burden on regulated stablecoin conversions would come on top of that investment, even as it exempts the unregulated alternative.
Still a long way from becoming law
The Commission des Finances of the Assemblée nationale adopted the stablecoin amendment before rejecting the entire revenue section of the 2027 budget bill. The amendment must now be redeposited, defended again and voted on in public session ahead of the solemn vote scheduled for 20 October.
The episode follows the collapse of a separate measure in the 2026 budget cycle, a wealth tax project that would have classified digital assets as unproductive goods, which was dropped after that budget was rejected. France's approach also stands apart from its neighbours: Germany exempts capital gains entirely for crypto held more than one year, while Italy has moved the other way, raising its rate to 33% and scrapping its €2,000 exemption threshold.
