French Senate passes crypto tax-information bill

France's Senate has adopted a bill to authorise approval of two international tax-information agreements, including the arrangement for automatically exchanging crypto transaction records. The adopted text on the Senate website, numbered 21, records passage at first reading on October 27 under the accelerated procedure.

The decision takes the proposal beyond its finance committee examination. It does not complete the French legislative process or establish that exchanges have started with every overseas partner. The Senate's legislative dossier, checked after the vote, records the first-reading adoption rather than a promulgated law.

Dalimss News reported the committee's approval on October 26, when the plenary debate was still pending. That committee adopted the bill on October 21. The two substantive articles in the newly adopted text retain the approval provisions contained in the committee version.

Article 1 concerns the multilateral agreement supporting the Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework, or CARF. Article 2 concerns an addendum to the existing financial-account information exchange agreement. France signed both instruments in Asunción on November 26, 2024. Neither article sets a new crypto tax rate.

Passage advances the exchange framework

The distinction between collecting records and exchanging them is central to the bill. In his October 21 report on the Senate website, rapporteur Emmanuel Capus explains that French law already requires covered crypto service providers to gather information about transactions conducted from January 1, 2026. The first declarations are due in 2027.

Those domestic requirements followed the European Union's DAC8 directive and its incorporation into French law through the 2025 finance law. The international agreement would allow France to receive information about French tax residents using providers in partner jurisdictions, while sending partners the relevant information collected about their residents.

The reporting framework covers exchanges between crypto-assets and conventional currencies, exchanges between different crypto-assets, and transfers. The report describes aggregation by asset and operation type, rather than treating every record as a new tax assessment. Reporting providers include businesses that execute exchange transactions for customers or make an exchange platform available to them.

For providers outside the EU, the agreement also aims to avoid multiple reporting obligations. Capus's report says this depends on information they collect already being exchanged with the French tax authority through a framework recognised as equivalent to the one under DAC8.

Records exchanged would identify users and their tax residence, alongside their tax identification numbers and, where relevant, people controlling an entity. The information also identifies reporting providers and includes transaction counts, quantities and total values. Authorities would exchange the records annually, within nine months of the relevant calendar year's end, using a common secure electronic format.

Financial-account reporting also expands

The second agreement would add detail to an established system. Under the proposed addendum, exchanged records would show whether an account holder has supplied a valid tax-residence self-certification. They would also identify account type, whether it is new or pre-existing, and whether it is jointly held.

For joint accounts, the information would include the number of holders. Other additions concern the roles of people controlling entities and, for certain investment structures, the capacity in which a person holds an interest. The report says these details should help tax authorities assess risks and target checks.

That account-information system already operates at scale. The report says France received records from 109 partner jurisdictions in 2025, covering 11.6 million financial accounts with combined balances of €456 billion for the 2024 reporting year. These are financial-account figures, not an estimate of crypto holdings or revenue expected from the new bill.

Further approval and activation remain

The legislative dossier on the Senate website lists the Senate as the first chamber considering the bill. France's parliamentary process requires examination by both chambers before final adoption and promulgation. The newly published Senate outcome therefore should not be described as completed French approval of the agreements.

There are also operational conditions. The report says each jurisdiction must complete the required notifications and designate the other as an exchange partner. Signing the multilateral agreement alone does not activate all possible relationships. France also intends to require additional personal-data safeguards consistent with the EU's General Data Protection Regulation.

The report schedules France's first crypto-information exchanges for 2027 using 2026 transaction data, while acknowledging that the initial volume is difficult to forecast. Senate passage advances the authorisation process; it does not remove the remaining parliamentary steps or the conditions governing exchanges with individual partners.