Crypto tax in France went up in 2026: the flat tax on a gain is no longer the 30% that many guides still print. The social security financing law for 2026 raised the social levies on this kind of income from 17.2% to 18.6%, and the tax administration’s own question-and-answer page on crypto now gives a total of 31.4%. The law also says the new rate applies from the taxation of 2025 income, so on our reading the return filed in spring 2026 for 2025 sales was already caught, as well as the gains you make in 2026. This is the situation as of 24 October 2026, and it is the one point where the official documents do not all say the same thing yet.
The rest of the system did not move. A household still owes nothing when its crypto sales add up to 305 euros or less in a year, it still files form 2086 with the 2042 C income tax return, and it still has to list every account held with a foreign platform on form 3916-bis, even in a year without a single sale. This lesson goes through each of those steps, the option for the progressive income tax scale, the point where a trader stops being a private investor, and the new reporting duty of platforms under the EU’s DAC8 directive. A short section at the end is for Americans and Britons who live in France.
The general principles (what a taxable event is, why a blockchain, where users swap tokens directly from their own wallets without handing custody of their funds to a company.">swap is treated differently from one country to the next, how a gain is measured) are in our guide to crypto tax basics, the previous lesson of this path. Here we stay with France and go into the detail. This is general information, not tax advice: for your own situation, ask an expert-comptable, a tax lawyer or your local tax office (service des impôts des particuliers).
Crypto tax in France: the flat tax rate for 2025 and 2026 gains
The French flat tax, the prélèvement forfaitaire unique (PFU), has two parts. The first is income tax at 12.8%, set by article 200 C of the general tax code (CGI) for gains that fall under article 150 VH bis, the article that governs occasional sales of crypto-assets by individuals. The second is a set of social levies: the CSG, the CRDS at 0.5% and a solidarity levy at 7.5%.
The change sits in the CSG. Article 12 of law n° 2025-1403 of 30 December 2025, the social security financing law for 2026 (LFSS), replaced “9,2 %” with “10,6 %” in article L136-8 of the social security code for income from capital. The levies therefore total 10.6 + 0.5 + 7.5 = 18.6%, and the flat tax 12.8 + 18.6 = 31.4%. The law was published in the Journal officiel on 31 December 2025, after the Constitutional Council’s decision n° 2025-899 DC, with article 12 intact.
The date of effect is what surprised people. Part II of article 12 says the higher rate applies “à compter de l’imposition des revenus de l’année 2025” for the contribution on income from assets (article L136-6 of the social security code), and only from 1 January 2026 for investment income taxed at source (article L136-7). Crypto gains belong to the first family. The official commentary of the tax administration, the BOFiP, describes them as subject to the “prélèvements sociaux sur les revenus du patrimoine”, which is the L136-6 contribution, and L136-6 covers in general terms the capital gains subject to income tax. The same article 12 lists the income that stays at 9.2%: rental income, property gains collected by the notary, some interest and life-insurance products. Crypto gains are not on that list.
On our reading, the text means that a gain made on a sale in 2025, declared in April to June 2026, carries 18.6% of social levies, and so does a gain made in 2026, declared in spring 2027. The administration’s practical brochure for the 2026 campaign applies 18.6% to securities gains of 2025. Its crypto section prints no figure: it says the gain is taxed at 12.8% and subject to social levies, and the 2086 notice for 2025 says the same.
The impots.gouv.fr page on declaring crypto gains, in its version modified on 17 July 2026, says private gains are taxed at the “prélèvement forfaitaire unique (PFU) de 31,4 % (12,8 % d’impôt + 18,6 % de prélèvements sociaux)”. It does not say from which tax year. The site was under maintenance all day on 24 October 2026, so we read the copy kept by the Internet Archive on 25 August 2026. The BOFiP page on crypto gains, by contrast, is still the version of 23 April 2024: it says 17.2% and “un taux global de 30 %”. Commentary pages are updated after the law, sometimes long after, and the law prevails. If your tax assessment notice (avis d’imposition) for 2025 income shows something you did not expect, the figure to check it against is 18.6% of the net gain for the levies, and the tax office can tell you which rate it applied.
| Item | Gains made in 2025 (return filed in spring 2026) | Gains made in 2026 (return filed in spring 2027) |
|---|---|---|
| Income tax at the flat rate | 12.8% | 12.8% |
| Social levies | 18.6% on our reading of the LFSS 2026 (17.2% before it) | 18.6% |
| Total flat tax (PFU) | 31.4% on our reading | 31.4% |
| Option for the progressive scale | Yes, box 3CN; levies still 18.6% | Yes, unless the 2027 budget changes it |
| Tax-free threshold | Total sales of 305 euros or less in the year | Same |
Sources for the table: CGI articles 150 VH bis and 200 C, LFSS 2026 article 12, impots.gouv.fr (version of 17 July 2026), rates as of 24 October 2026. The 2025 column applies the date of effect written in article 12; the BOFiP has not been updated to confirm it.
What does 1.4 points mean in euros? Take a net gain of 5,000 euros (our own arithmetic, for illustration). Income tax at 12.8% is 640 euros and the levies at 18.6% are 930 euros: 1,570 euros in total. At the old 30% the bill would have been 1,500 euros, so the rise costs 70 euros on that gain. On a 50,000 euro gain the difference is 700 euros.
What triggers the tax, and what does not
French tax on crypto starts with a disposal, not with a price rise. Three events count. Selling crypto for euros or another legal currency is the obvious one. Paying for a good or a service with crypto is the second: buying a laptop with bitcoin is, for the tax office, a sale at the value of the laptop. The third is an exchange with a soulte, meaning a swap where some legal currency changes hands on top of the crypto.
A swap from one crypto-asset to another without a soulte is not taxed at that moment. The tax is deferred (sursis d’imposition) until the portfolio is turned into euros or used to pay for something, and the BOFiP says such swaps “ne donnent pas lieu à déclaration”: you do not even list them on the 2086. That includes swaps into stablecoins under current law.
That last point may change. On 16 October 2026 the National Assembly adopted at first reading amendment I-3898 to the 2027 finance bill, which would make swaps from crypto into e-money tokens (stablecoins such as USDC or EURC under the EU’s MiCA rules) taxable from 1 January 2027 and change the gain formula. It is a proposal, not law: the Senate and a joint committee still have to look at the bill, and as of 24 October 2026 we found no Senate vote on it. Our news story on the stablecoin swap amendment has the vote, and our guide on what stablecoins are explains the difference between an e-money token and other stablecoins.
Holding crypto without selling creates no capital gains tax, however much the price has risen. Moving coins between your own wallets is not a sale either. That does not mean nothing has to be declared: foreign accounts go on form 3916-bis every year (see below), and income such as mining or staking rewards is taxed as income, sale or no sale.
Staking has an answer on the administration’s side: its question-and-answer page puts the profits of mining and staking in non-commercial profits (BNC), the category described further down. Lending interest and airdrops are the grey zone. We found no official text that settles them for every case, and specialists disagree on the category to use. If these make up a real part of your crypto activity, this is the point to take to an adviser.
The 305 euro threshold counts sales, not gains
Article 150 VH bis exempts a household whose total sale prices in the year do not exceed 305 euros. The threshold applies to the sum of what you received on taxable sales, not to your profit. Sell 400 euros of ether with a 20 euro gain and you are above it; sell 300 euros with a 250 euro gain and you are below it. Deferred swaps do not count towards the total.
Above 305 euros, the whole net gain is taxed from the first euro. There is no allowance that removes the first 305 euros of profit.
The threshold is set per tax household (foyer fiscal), so the sales of both partners of a married or PACS couple filing together are added up. Being under it does not exempt you from the paperwork. The 2026 practical brochure of the administration is explicit: the 2086 “doit être jointe à la déclaration de revenus y compris lorsque le montant des cessions est inférieur à 305 €”. In that case the 2086 notice asks you to fill in only the lines needed to add up your sale prices.
Flat rate or progressive scale: how the 3CN option works
Since sales made from 1 January 2023, a household can ask for its crypto gains to be taxed at the progressive income tax scale instead of the 12.8% flat rate. You do it by ticking box 3CN on the 2042 C. The option is global: it covers all the crypto gains of the household for that year. It is irrevocable once the filing deadline has passed, although you can still change your mind up to that deadline.
It is also separate from the other scale option, box 2OP, which covers dividends, interest and gains on shares. You can tick one, the other or both. The social levies stay at 18.6% whatever you choose; only the 12.8% part is replaced.
The scale for 2025 income, set by the finance law n° 2026-103 of 19 February 2026, applies per share of the family quotient:
| Taxable income per share (2025 income) | Marginal rate |
|---|---|
| Up to 11,600 euros | 0% |
| 11,601 to 29,579 euros | 11% |
| 29,580 to 84,577 euros | 30% |
| 84,578 to 181,917 euros | 41% |
| Above 181,917 euros | 45% |
The option has one extra effect. When the gain is taxed at the scale, 6.8 points of the CSG paid on it are deductible from the taxable income of the year the CSG is paid. The extra 1.4 points added by the LFSS 2026 are not deductible.
Back to the 5,000 euro gain, again as plain arithmetic. For a household taxed at 11%, the scale gives 550 euros of income tax plus 930 euros of levies, 1,480 euros, against 1,570 euros at the flat rate, and the 340 euros of deductible CSG lower the next year’s income a little. For a household in the 30% bracket, the scale gives 1,500 + 930 = 2,430 euros: far more than the flat tax. The option tends to help only households whose marginal rate is 0% or 11%, and the gain counts in the revenu fiscal de référence in both cases, which can affect benefits and some local rates. Run both calculations in the online simulator of impots.gouv.fr before you decide.
Declaring in practice: form 2086 and the 2042 C
Every year with at least one taxable sale (or with sales under the 305 euro threshold), the household fills in form 2086, cerfa n° 16043, titled for 2025 “Déclaration des plus ou moins-values réalisées en 2025 suite à des cessions d’actifs numériques”. Online, it sits at step 3 of the return, under the “Déclarations annexes” button, and the amount you enter fills box 3AN or 3BN of the main return automatically. The net result is then carried to the 2042 C.
What the 2086 asks for each sale
For each taxable sale, the form asks for the date, the value of your whole crypto portfolio at that moment, the sale price, the fees, any soulte, the total acquisition price of the portfolio and the fractions of initial capital already used by earlier sales. The portfolio value counts every holding, wherever it sits. The 2086 notice lists exchanges “y compris étrangères”, personal servers and offline storage devices. A hardware wallet in a drawer is part of the calculation.
The whole-portfolio formula in one example
France does not ask which coin you sold. The gain is the sale price minus a share of the total price you paid for the whole portfolio, the share being the sale price divided by the portfolio’s value at the time. The 2086 notice gives this example: you bought crypto for 1,000 euros, your portfolio is worth 1,200 euros, you sell 450 euros. The gain is 450 – (1,000 x 450 / 1,200) = 75 euros. The 375 euros of cost used up by that sale are then subtracted from the acquisition price for the next one. The method, with longer worked examples and the records to keep, is the subject of a later lesson of this path.
The fees of a taxable sale are deducted from the sale price, in the first part of the formula only.
Where the numbers go and what happens to losses
Line 52 of the 2086 gives the net result for the year. A net gain goes in box 3AN of the 2042 C, a net loss in box 3BN, and box 3CN is the scale option. A loss can only offset crypto gains of the same year. The administration’s brochure states it plainly: the loss “n’est pas reportable sur les années suivantes”. A loss of 2025 is gone on 1 January 2026.
Dates of the 2026 campaign
For 2025 income, online filing opened on 9 April 2026. The deadlines were 19 May for paper returns, then online 21 May for departments 01 to 19 and for non-residents, 28 May for departments 20 to 54 and 4 June for departments 55 to 974/976, according to the law firm CMS. The 2027 dates for 2026 income have not been published as of 24 October 2026.
Foreign platforms and wallets: form 3916-bis, even without a sale
Article 1649 bis C of the CGI requires anyone domiciled in France to declare, with the income return, the references of crypto-asset accounts “ouverts, détenus, utilisés ou clos” with a company or organisation established abroad. The wording changed with law n° 2026-534 of 25 June 2026: it now speaks of crypto-asset portfolios within the meaning of MiCA, and it adds unique non-fungible tokens (NFTs) held or used abroad. We could not confirm the date from which the NFT part applies.
On paper, the form is n° 3916-3916-bis, usually called the 3916-bis, one per account, attached to the 2042; online, the accounts are entered at the end of the return. Box 8UU of the return is the one that flags accounts abroad. The duty does not depend on any sale. An account opened years ago with a foreign exchange and left untouched in 2025 still goes on the 2026 return, and so does an account you closed during the year. This is the answer to the question many readers ask: if you have not sold, you owe no tax on the gain and you file no 2086, but a foreign account is still declared every year.
What makes an account “foreign” is the legal entity you have a contract with, not the brand. Some exchanges serve French customers through companies based in other EU countries, and the entity can change when a platform reorganises. Look for the company named in your terms of service or on your account statements. Our guide to how centralised exchanges work explains what an exchange account really is.
A wallet you control yourself is a different case. The text targets accounts opened with entities established abroad, and a hardware wallet or an app where you hold the keys is not run by any entity. Tax specialists read it as outside the 3916-bis; the official FAQ was out of reach on 24 October 2026, so check it before relying on that reading. Our guides to crypto wallets and to self-custody explain the difference between an account and a wallet.
The fines are set by article 1736 X of the CGI, per declaration:
| Failure | Fine | If the foreign accounts were worth more than 50,000 euros at any time in the year |
|---|---|---|
| Each undeclared account (or unique NFT) | 750 euros | 1,500 euros |
| Each omission or inaccuracy | 125 euros | 250 euros |
| Cap for omissions and inaccuracies | 10,000 euros per declaration | 10,000 euros per declaration |
Source: CGI article 1736 X, as described in the BOFiP, as of 24 October 2026. Undeclared foreign assets can also lead to other consequences under the tax procedure code, which go beyond this guide.
When you are no longer a private investor: BIC, BNC and mining
Everything above applies to the private investor managing their own savings. The BOFiP describes two other regimes.
A person whose profession is buying and selling crypto runs a commercial activity, and the profits are industrial and commercial profits (BIC) taxed under article 34 of the CGI. Then there is a narrower case written into the law in 2022: operations carried out “dans des conditions analogues à celles qui caractérisent une activité professionnelle”, without being the person’s profession, fall into non-commercial profits (BNC) under article 92 of the CGI. The administration itself says, in its commentary of 28 June 2023, that this “régime subsidiaire n’a vocation à s’appliquer que dans des cas d’espèce exceptionnels”. The tax office’s question-and-answer page gives the profile it has in mind: investors who make numerous and sophisticated operations throughout the year with the same tools and techniques as professional traders. Mining and staking profits are taxed as BNC as well.
There is no number that tips you over. The BOFiP gives no threshold of trades, volume or income, and figures quoted on blogs (“a few hundred sales a year”) have no official basis. The tax office and, if it comes to that, the judge look at the facts as a whole: how often you trade, the sums involved, the tools used, the share of your income it represents. Trading futures or other derivatives is a separate subject that article 150 VH bis does not cover.
In the BNC case, the administration says the profit is taxed at the progressive scale plus social levies, with a choice between the micro-BNC regime, available up to 83,600 euros of receipts with a flat 34% deduction for costs (article 102 ter of the CGI), and the deduction of actual costs (déclaration contrôlée). A real buy-and-sell business in BIC follows the ordinary rules for companies and the self-employed. Losses, deductible costs and forms work differently from the private regime, which is why this is the case where an expert-comptable earns their fee.
DAC8: your platform now reports to the tax office
From 1 January 2026, crypto-asset service providers in the EU collect data on their users for the tax authorities. The rule comes from Council Directive (EU) 2023/2226, called DAC8, which the European Commission says applies from that date. The first exchanges between tax authorities, covering 2026, are due by 30 September 2027. Our calendar entry on the first DAC8 exchange in 2027 tracks that date.
France wrote the rules into its tax code (articles 1649 AC bis to quinquies of the CGI). A platform reports each user’s identity, tax residence and, where available, tax identification number, then the transactions of the year: swaps between crypto-assets, sales against euros or another currency, and transfers to and from addresses, with gross amounts, units and number of operations. A user who does not provide the required information after two reminders and 60 days has their reportable transactions blocked. The platform pays 15 euros per transaction not reported, up to 2 million euros a year.
DAC8 creates no new tax and leaves the rules of crypto tax in France as they are. What it changes is that the tax office will be able to compare your 2086 and your 3916-bis with what the platforms have sent, and a missing form will be easier to spot. The identity checks you passed when you opened your account, the KYC process, are what lets the platform tie your transactions to your tax residence. The MiCA licensing rules that apply to the platforms themselves are covered in our guide to MiCA; the tax rules above apply whatever the platform’s status.
If you are American or British and live in France
Your passport does not decide crypto tax in France; your tax residence does. The French rules above apply in full to a US citizen or a UK national who lives in France. What changes is what your other country asks of you.
US citizens and green card holders
The United States taxes its citizens on their worldwide income wherever they live. The IRS page for Americans abroad, updated on 20 October 2026, says “You are subject to tax on worldwide income from all sources.” For US tax purposes, digital assets are property, so a sale reported in France also goes on your US return (Form 8949 and the digital asset question on Form 1040), computed with US rules: dollars, FIFO or specific identification, short and long term. An American in France can therefore owe tax on the same gain in two countries.
The tool to avoid paying twice is the foreign tax credit, and the IRS stresses that it is only available if you file a US return. Living abroad gives an automatic two-month extension, from 15 April to 15 June for calendar-year filers. How the US-France tax treaty and the credit apply to French social levies is a technical point we have not verified for this lesson: ask an adviser who handles both systems.
On reporting, FinCEN said in Notice 2020-2 of December 2020 that a foreign account holding only virtual currency is not reportable on the FBAR (FinCEN Form 114) “at this time”, while announcing a plan to change that. An exchange account that also holds euros can be reportable for that cash. Form 8938 is a separate test.
UK nationals
UK capital gains tax follows residence. Once you are tax-resident in France and not in the UK, a crypto disposal is taxed in France. One trap concerns people who return: under the temporary non-residence rule described in HMRC helpsheet HS278 (updated 6 April 2026), someone who was UK-resident for at least four of the seven years before leaving and comes back within five years can be taxed in the UK on certain gains made while abroad, in the year of return. The helpsheet deals with gains in general and does not mention cryptoassets by name.
What to prepare before your next return
None of this needs to be done on the night of the deadline. A few habits make the spring 2027 return, covering 2026, much easier:
- Export the full transaction history of every platform you used in 2026, including those you have left, while you can still log in.
- Keep proof of every purchase price since your first purchase, because the French formula uses the acquisition price of the whole portfolio.
- Write down the value of all your holdings, on platforms and in your own wallets, on the dates you sell.
- List each account held with a foreign entity, opened, used or closed during the year, for the 3916-bis.
- Add up your sale prices for the year to see where you stand against the 305 euro threshold.
- Compare the flat tax and the scale for your household before ticking box 3CN.
Watch two things before then: the fate of the stablecoin amendment in the 2027 finance bill, and the impots.gouv.fr pages for 2026 income, expected in spring 2027. For a situation with staking income, several foreign platforms, a move abroad or a large gain, an expert-comptable or the tax office will give you an answer that applies to your case.
