France’s National Assembly backed a measure that would make swaps into single-currency stablecoins a taxable event for private crypto investors. The vote on Oct. 16 was 38 to 37. Narrow. The proposal is Amendment I-3898, put forward by lawmaker Nicolas Sansu, and it sits inside the 2027 finance bill. It is not law yet.
What the amendment would do
If it survives the full legislative process, the change would apply to disposals and exchanges from Jan. 1, 2027. Today, crypto-to-crypto trades without a cash adjustment get tax deferral in France. The amendment would remove that treatment when the seller receives what the text calls electronic money tokens, as defined under Article 3 of the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation. In practice that means stablecoins pegged to a single official currency, not every token marketed as stable.
The wording matters. It leans on MiCA’s asset definition rather than requiring that an issuer be authorized. Swaps into other crypto-assets would keep deferral when no cash changes hands.
The text also changes how gains are calculated. It would use disposal proceeds minus the acquisition cost of the assets sold, with a weighted-average cost for tokens of the same kind bought at different prices. The current formula looks at the acquisition cost and value of the investor’s whole crypto portfolio. That is a real shift, and perhaps the part that would cause the most confusion at filing time.
The default flat rate on private investors’ crypto gains is 31.4%, made up of 12.8% income tax and 18.6% social levies. It applies to gains, not the full amount exchanged. Investors can still elect the progressive income-tax scale, and the existing exemption for annual disposal proceeds of 305 euros or less would stay.
Why the government pushed back
Public accounts minister David Amiel asked lawmakers to withdraw the measure. He said implementation would be too complex in its current form and called for more work on defining stablecoins and tracing reallocations inside crypto portfolios. The Assembly adopted it anyway.
Sansu’s explanatory statement argues that stablecoin conversions should lose deferral because the tokens can be used for payments and further investments.
What comes next
The bill is still in its first Assembly reading. Senate scrutiny, further parliamentary steps, final adoption and promulgation all remain. The Assembly’s published budget calendar schedules a vote on the bill’s first part for Oct. 20 and a vote on the full bill for Nov. 17. Until then, the tax treatment of stablecoin swaps stays as it is.
