French Finance Committee Backs €100,000 Bitcoin (BTC) Self-Custody Reporting Rule

Amendment I-CF821 Clears Committee

France moved to pull self-custodied crypto into its tax net on Friday (Oct. 9), when the National Assembly's Finance Committee adopted amendment I-CF821 to the 2027 budget bill. The measure would require anyone holding crypto-assets outside a crypto exchange or another licensed service provider to declare them once their value reaches 100,000 euros, about $112,000, and it covers assets kept in personal wallets of any kind. Reporting would be based on each holding's value as of Dec. 31, and a holder who fails to file faces a fine of up to 10,000 euros. That valuation anchor means a Bitcoin (BTC) price reading on Dec. 31 would set the declared figure for every wallet above the threshold. Legally, the proposal adds a provision to France's general tax code. The amendment text places the duty on the individual who controls the keys, whether the assets sit on a hardware device such as the Tangem Mobile Wallet or in a cold wallet kept offline. Sponsors Charles de Courson, Jean-Pierre Bataille and Michel Castellani, all of the parliamentary group Liberties, Independents, Overseas and Territories (LIOT), framed the rule as an anti-evasion tool. They cited a parliamentary inquiry into the taxation of wealthy individuals, which put crypto capital gains at 3.5 billion euros for 2021, against barely 400 million euros of holdings actually declared to the tax authorities in the same year. The wallet-disclosure measure was one of five crypto-related amendments the Finance Committee adopted last week. The others included an exit levy on crypto holdings above 800,000 euros for taxpayers who move abroad, and an end to tax deferrals when holders convert into fiat-backed stablecoins, which places the disclosure rule inside a broader fiscal package aimed at digital assets rather than a standalone measure.

Revenue Section Rejected 31-3

Committee adoption does not make the rule law, and the same session that cleared it signaled trouble for its prospects. After adopting the crypto amendments on Friday, the Finance Committee rejected the revenue section of the 2027 budget bill by 31 votes to 3, a margin that shows disagreement inside the chamber runs well beyond crypto to the budget's revenue side as a whole. The assembly's amendment record lists I-CF821 among the texts adopted in committee, but each measure must be submitted again and approved during the parliamentary proceedings before it becomes part of the legislation. Lawmakers are scheduled to begin debating the revenue section in the National Assembly on Tuesday (Oct. 13), and the reading starts from the government's original draft, a text that contains none of the crypto provisions. In practical terms, the three LIOT sponsors must re-table the disclosure rule, the exit levy and the stablecoin clause during plenary consideration, and each needs a majority on the floor, a higher bar than a committee vote. The committee's defeat does not kill the bill: the full chamber will rebuild the revenue section from the government's draft, and that rebuild is where re-tabled amendments get their hearing. Nothing in the package is in force today. There is no effective date, no binding obligation on holders and no penalty that applies yet, and the earliest a reporting duty could take effect is if a re-tabled version survives plenary debate and the final budget text is adopted.

Two things stand out in our reading. First, the disclosure duty is a proposal, not a final rule: Friday's 31-3 defeat of the revenue section leaves its path genuinely uncertain, and a re-tabled text could return with a different threshold or valuation date. Second, the design targets the top of the holder base. A flat 100,000-euro trigger with a single Dec. 31 valuation creates one annual filing per qualifying wallet and leaves smaller self-custody users with no new duty, and it reaches holdings rather than transaction-privacy tools such as a crypto mixer. The gap the sponsors cited, 3.5 billion euros in 2021 gains against 400 million euros declared, is the behavior the filing is built to surface. The number to watch on Oct. 13 is whether that 100,000-euro line survives the floor.