France's parliament approves vote to hit stablecoin trades with 31% capital gains tax
Amendment I-3898 removes tax deferral for MiCA-compliant stablecoins starting January 2027.
French lawmakers narrowly approved a proposal to tax gains when investors swap cryptocurrency for stablecoins, bringing the transactions a step closer to falling under the country’s 31.4% capital gains levy.
The National Assembly adopted amendment I-3898 to the 2027 budget on Oct. 16 by 38 votes to 37, with 25 abstentions. The vote advances a proposal previously approved by its finance committee.
The proposed changes would apply to transactions from Jan. 1, 2027. They remain subject to the budget’s remaining parliamentary stages and could still be amended or removed before becoming law.
Exchanges between crypto without an additional cash payment generally benefit from tax deferral under current French tax rules. Taxable gains on private investments face a default rate of 31.4%, although investors can opt for the progressive income-tax scale.
The amendment would remove that deferral when investors receive e-money tokens as defined by the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) framework.
Investors could therefore owe tax on gains when moving into qualifying stablecoins, even without withdrawing the funds in fiat currency to a bank account.
The proposal has drawn warnings about its effect on trading. Francois Volpoet, Chainalysis’ regional sales director for France, told CoinDesk last week that it could push investors toward decentralized finance platforms, peer-to-peer transactions and offshore exchanges outside international tax-reporting arrangements.
Public Accounts Minister David Amiel raised questions about implementation and asked for the amendment to be withdrawn, opposing it otherwise.
“We first need to define stablecoins, then ensure our ability to monitor and trace reallocations within a portfolio of assets,” he told lawmakers during the parliamentary debate.
The finance committee’s rapporteur general, Philippe Juvin, said he favored keeping the deferral given crypto’s volatility.
The text would also replace France’s portfolio-wide capital-gains calculation with one based on the acquisition cost of the assets sold, using a weighted average for units of the same cryptocurrency bought at different prices.
Diversified RWA stablecoins sustain 5-7% yield from real credit as crypto funding compresses to ~4%. GENIUS pushes yield off-chain; TAM grows to $4B in 3 years.
Asanat Analysis — Why it matters
France's stablecoin tax move signals a critical inflection point for EU crypto policy. The 31% capital gains rate—substantially higher than traditional securities (~36% at top marginal rate but often lower in practice)—explicitly targets stablecoin velocity and adoption. By removing MiCA compliance as a tax shield, Paris effectively negates the regulatory compliance incentive that stablecoin issuers and platforms have built their EU strategies around. This fractures the premise that regulatory clarity automatically enables market development.
The January 2027 implementation window matters: it coincides with full MiCA enforcement and creates immediate arbitrage pressure. Traders will migrate stablecoin activity to lower-tax EU jurisdictions (Malta, Portugal, Switzerland corridor) or offshore entirely, likely accelerating the fragmentation of European liquidity. Historically, targeted asset taxes (see India's crypto tax, Korea's repatriation rules) drive trading volume away from regulated venues into peer-to-peer and cross-border channels, undermining the tax base itself. France's move may inadvertently push stablecoin settlement toward less transparent infrastructure.
For the sector: this signals that EU governments view stablecoins as tax policy objects first, market infrastructure second. Other member states will likely model similar rates, creating a race-to-the-bottom dynamic that could accelerate CBDC adoption as the preferred settlement layer—the unstated second-order effect.