France's National Assembly Finance Committee adopted an amendment on Friday, October 11, 2026, that would require holders of self-custodied crypto worth more than 100,000 euros (about $112,000) to declare those assets to tax authorities each year. The measure, amendment I-CF821, was reported by Cointelegraph and sponsored by Charles de Courson, Jean-Pierre Bataille, and Michel Castellani of the LIOT parliamentary group.
The rule targets a specific gap: assets held in self-custody, outside the reach of regulated exchanges and brokers. Holdings parked with a crypto-asset service provider are already visible to the state through those intermediaries. Coins sitting in a private wallet are not, and that is the slice this amendment wants on the books.
The threshold and the penalty
Under the proposal, anyone holding self-custodied crypto valued above 100,000 euros as of December 31 would have to report it. Failure to declare qualifying assets carries a fine of up to 10,000 euros.
The number that drove the vote was the tax gap. Lawmakers cited figures showing crypto capital gains in France reached 3.5 billion euros in 2021, while only 400 million euros in holdings were actually declared. That mismatch is the stated justification: a filing requirement aimed at pulling undeclared private-wallet balances into view before gains are realized and taxed.
A 100,000 euro line is high enough to leave most casual holders untouched and low enough to catch serious balances. It is a disclosure rule, not a new tax. The amendment asks holders to report what they control, not to hand over a cut on the spot.
A long way from law
The vote is a committee step, not an enacted statute. The same Finance Committee that approved the amendment went on to reject the entire revenue section of the 2027 budget bill. That procedural move resets the board: the crypto amendments would have to be resubmitted and approved again during the full parliamentary proceedings before any of this binds taxpayers.
Debate on the budget's revenue section is set to begin Tuesday, starting from the government's original draft rather than the committee's amended version. In practice, a committee-adopted crypto amendment can evaporate and need to be re-won on the floor. Readers in France should treat this as a signal of legislative intent, not a rule to file against yet.
Part of a wider French squeeze
The disclosure push lands alongside other French moves to tighten the net around crypto wealth. Lawmakers have separately advanced a measure to tax crypto holders who leave the country with large balances, part of a broader pattern of treating digital assets as a taxable base worth chasing.
The direction mirrors what is happening elsewhere in Europe. Greece has drafted a 10% crypto tax with a modest exemption, and MiCA enforcement has pushed platforms to clean up unauthorized tokens across the bloc. The common thread is governments building visibility into holdings they previously could not see, and self-custody is the frontier where that visibility is hardest to establish.
Record-keeping for large private-wallet balances
For anyone spending from their own wallet, the practical lesson is about record-keeping, not panic. Self-custody keeps control of keys in the holder's hands, but it does not keep balances invisible to a tax authority that writes a reporting requirement. If this amendment or a successor passes, French residents with large private-wallet balances would face an annual filing obligation regardless of whether they ever moved the coins.
The appeal of spending straight from a non-custodial wallet has always been autonomy. That autonomy is unchanged by a disclosure rule; what changes is the paperwork attached to it. Holders below the 100,000 euro line would see no new obligation at all.
Nothing here is settled. The threshold, the penalty, and even whether the measure survives committee rejection are all open until the National Assembly votes on the final text. For now, the takeaway is narrow and concrete: a French parliamentary committee has put a 100,000 euro disclosure line on the table, and the full chamber will decide whether it stays there.
Overview
A French Finance Committee amendment would require annual disclosure of self-custodied crypto above 100,000 euros, with fines up to 10,000 euros for non-compliance. Lawmakers justified it with a 2021 gap between 3.5 billion euros in gains and 400 million euros declared. The committee then rejected the wider revenue section, so the measure must be re-approved in full parliamentary debate beginning Tuesday before it can become law.
