France's National Assembly adopted an amendment that would tax certain stablecoin swaps, pushing the measure one step further through the country's legislative process. The vote targets a narrow slice of crypto activity — swaps between stablecoins — and signals lawmakers want those transactions treated as taxable events rather than simple conversions.
The amendment is the only one of three floated crypto tax measures to clear the Assembly so far. Two other proposals — an exit tax and a reporting regime for self-custodial wallets — are still being weighed.
What the amendment actually covers
The measure focuses on stablecoin-to-stablecoin swaps. That's a category that has long sat in a gray zone for French tax authorities, since a swap between two tokens pegged to the same currency doesn't obviously look like a disposal of one asset for another. By adopting the amendment, the Assembly is taking the position that it should.
The text doesn't touch spot purchases of bitcoin or ether, and it doesn't speak to ordinary trading pairs involving non-stablecoin assets. Its scope is deliberately tight. Whether that survives the rest of the legislative gauntlet is another matter.
Two proposals still sitting on the table
The exit tax and the self-custodial wallet reporting rule remain under consideration. Neither has been adopted. The exit tax, as the name suggests, would target unrealized gains when crypto holders leave France's tax net — a measure that has drawn attention in other jurisdictions weighing similar rules. The self-custody reporting proposal would require users to disclose wallets they control directly, a requirement that has been among the more contentious ideas in European crypto policy circles this year.
For now, both are just proposals. The Assembly's adoption of the stablecoin amendment doesn't bind it to pass the other two, and lawmakers could amend, merge, or drop them as the process moves along.
A narrow win for the government's tax push
The vote gives French authorities a concrete foothold on crypto taxation after a stretch of consultation and draft language. Getting the stablecoin amendment through the Assembly is the easy part — the measure still has to survive the rest of the legislative process before it becomes law, and the details of how the tax would be assessed and collected haven't been spelled out in the text adopted so far.
The timing isn't great for the industry. Crypto businesses operating in France have spent the past year adjusting to the European Union's MiCA framework, and a new tax layer on stablecoin swaps adds another compliance line item. Exchanges and brokers that facilitate those swaps will need to decide whether to build withholding into their systems or leave it to users to report.
The two outstanding proposals — the exit tax and the self-custodial wallet reporting rule — are the ones to watch. If either gets folded into the same legislative vehicle as the stablecoin amendment, the combined package could move faster than any of the three would on its own. If they're kept separate, each faces its own path and its own set of votes.
There's no scheduled date yet for when the Assembly will take up either measure. For now, the stablecoin amendment is the only one with an adopted text, and the rest is still open.
