The strangest part of France’s proposed stablecoin tax is not the rate. It is the list of coins it leaves out. The amendment adopted in October 2026 applies only to swaps into stablecoins authorised as electronic money tokens under the EU’s MiCA regulation — a category that includes Circle’s USDC and the euro token EURC. Tether’s USDT, by far the world’s most traded stablecoin, is not on that list, and neither are DAI or the gold-backed PAXG, because none of them hold MiCA authorisation as electronic money tokens.
A tax on the compliant
That creates an odd incentive structure. An investor who rotates profits into a fully regulated, EU-licensed stablecoin would face the new 31.4% charge from 2027. An investor who chooses the largest offshore-issued token instead would keep the old deferral. In effect, the proposal taxes the behaviour regulators say they want — using supervised European products — while leaving the alternative untouched.
Industry voices are warning about the side effects
François Volpoët, who leads Chainalysis in France, has cautioned that taxing regulated stablecoins could steer investors toward offshore exchanges and decentralised platforms, precisely the opposite of what MiCA was designed to achieve. MiCA’s whole logic was to bring crypto activity onshore, inside a supervised perimeter where issuers hold proper reserves and face audits. A tax that makes the supervised option more expensive than the unsupervised one cuts against that logic, critics argue.
The wider proposals around it
- The swap tax is one amendment inside the 2027 finance bill, still moving through parliament.
- A separate deputy’s amendment proposes disclosure obligations for self-hosted wallets worth €100,000 or more.
- Both ideas remain at proposal stage and may change substantially before any final vote.
What holders should take from this
For now, nothing in French tax law has changed, and nobody should restructure their holdings around a draft amendment. But the debate is a useful signal of direction: European governments increasingly view stablecoins as money-like instruments, and the tax treatment is starting to follow that view. If the French text survives in its current shape, the practical effect may be less revenue than expected — because users can simply pick the untaxed token. Watch how the Senate and the final budget text handle the USDT question; that detail will decide whether the law works as intended.
