Crypto Tax in France

France has one feature that surprises most newcomers: swapping one crypto for another isn't taxed, you're only taxed when you convert to euros, spend crypto, or earn it. This guide covers the rate, the forms (including the mandatory foreign-account declaration), and the key dates. CryptaTax then builds your French report from your transaction history.

This is general information, not tax advice. French crypto rules change and depend on your circumstances. Confirm the current position with the DGFiP or a qualified tax advisor.

Is crypto taxed in France?

Crypto is treated as digital assets (*actifs numériques*). For private investors, a taxable event only happens when you:

• convert crypto to euros (or other fiat)
• spend crypto on goods or services, or
• receive crypto as income (e.g. mining).

**Crypto-to-crypto swaps are *not* taxable**, and neither is simply buying or holding. This sets France apart from most of Europe.

Capital gains (the flat tax / PFU)

When you have a taxable disposal, the gain is taxed under the flat tax (*Prélèvement Forfaitaire Unique*, PFU):

• Rate: 30% on 2025 gains, 12.8% income tax + 17.2% social contributions. *(For 2026, the social-contribution portion increased, raising the combined rate to roughly 31.4%, confirm the rate for your tax year.)*
• €305 threshold: if your total annual disposals stay at or below €305, gains are tax-free.
• Option: you can elect the progressive income tax scale instead of the flat 12.8% if your bracket is lower (social contributions still apply).
• Cost basis: France uses a portfolio-wide proportional method (*plus-values de cessions d'actifs numériques*), not simple FIFO, each disposal is calculated relative to your whole portfolio's value and acquisition cost.

Professional traders, mining and income

If your activity is professional (or you're a miner), profits fall under the BNC regime (*Bénéfices Non Commerciaux*) at progressive income tax rates (up to 45%), with the micro-BNC option (a 34% allowance) available below €77,700 turnover. Receiving crypto via mining, staking, or airdrops is generally treated as income at its euro value on receipt.

Which forms do I file?

With your annual income tax return:

• Form 2086, your crypto capital gains/losses for the year (each disposal listed). → Crypto on Formulaire 2086
• Form 2042 C, carry the net result to line 3AN (gain) or 3BN (loss).
• Form 3916-bis, declare every crypto account held outside France. This is mandatory, and non-declaration carries penalties, most major exchanges are foreign, so this usually applies.

Key dates

• Tax year: calendar year (1 January, 31 December).
• Filing: in spring; online deadlines are staggered by *département* (around May, June), paper around 20 May.

How CryptaTax helps with French crypto tax

• Imports your full history from exchanges and wallets
• Applies the French proportional cost-basis method and the €305 threshold
• Defers crypto-to-crypto swaps correctly (taxing only euro conversions, spending, and income)
• Produces Form 2086-ready figures and your 3AN/3BN totals
• Lists your foreign accounts for the 3916-bis declaration

Common mistakes to avoid in France

France's regime looks generous because crypto-to-crypto swaps aren't a taxable event for private investors, but that very feature is where most people slip up. Treating swaps as invisible doesn't mean they're irrelevant: every swap quietly reshapes the acquisition cost of your whole portfolio, which feeds directly into the proportional calculation the moment you finally cash out to euros. Skip a few swaps in your records and the gain reported to the DGFiP on your first real disposal will be wrong, usually too high.

• Ignoring the foreign-account declaration. Most exchanges French residents use are based abroad, so the obligation to declare each account almost always applies. People forget it because no money changed hands, but it is a separate duty from declaring gains, with its own penalties.
• Forgetting that spending crypto is a disposal. Paying for goods or services in crypto, or using a crypto debit card, converts your holding just as selling for euros does. Card transactions can be frequent and easy to overlook across a whole year.
• Mixing personal and professional activity. Very frequent, structured trading can shift you out of the private-investor flat tax into the professional regime, which is taxed entirely differently. Drifting between the two without realising changes both your rate and your forms.
• Assuming a small year means nothing to file. Even where total disposals stay under the low annual threshold, the foreign-account declaration and good record-keeping can still apply, and a loss year is worth declaring so it is on record.
• Reconstructing cost basis from memory. France's portfolio-wide proportional method is unforgiving of gaps. Estimating a purchase price years later rarely matches what the DGFiP would expect from clean records.

None of these are exotic edge cases, they are the everyday slips that turn a simple return into a correction letter. The fix is almost always the same: keep a complete, continuous history so the proportional method and the flat tax can be applied to real numbers rather than reconstructed guesses.

Record-keeping for French filers

Because France calculates each disposal against the total value and total acquisition cost of your portfolio, your records have to be continuous, not just a snapshot of the trades you happened to cash out. A single missing transfer between two of your own wallets, or one un-logged swap, can throw off the proportion the DGFiP expects you to use. Think of record-keeping here as maintaining one unbroken timeline rather than a folder of isolated receipts.

• Every acquisition, date, asset, quantity, the euro value at the time, and any fees, so your total acquisition cost is defensible.
• Every disposal, sales to euros, purchases of goods or services, and crypto used to pay, each with the euro value on the day.
• Every swap, even though it isn't immediately taxed, because it changes the cost basis that the proportional method later relies on.
• Internal transfers between your own wallets and exchange accounts, with proof that both ends belong to you, so they aren't mistaken for disposals.
• A list of every account held outside France, ready for the annual foreign-account declaration.
• Income receipts from mining or other crypto earnings, valued in euros at the moment received.

Keep this evidence for several years after filing, French tax authorities can review prior periods, and the burden of showing how a figure was reached sits with you. Exchange exports get deleted, accounts get closed, and tokens get delisted, so the safest moment to capture a clean history is now, while the data still exists. CryptaTax keeps that timeline intact by reconstructing it from your imported sources rather than relying on you to remember each trade.

Year-end and planning considerations

Planning in France revolves around the fact that the taxable moment is the conversion to euros, not the gains building up on screen while you stay in crypto. That gives you some control over timing. Reviewing your position before the calendar year closes lets you see your realised result so far, understand where the low annual disposals threshold sits relative to your activity, and decide whether a planned sale belongs in this year or the next. The exact rate and threshold for your year are in the summary table on this page, confirm them before acting, since the social-contribution component has shifted recently.

Losses are part of the same picture. Where you hold positions that are worth less than you paid, realising them can offset gains within the rules, the general mechanics are covered in our guide to tax-loss harvesting, and because France's cost basis is portfolio-wide, it pays to understand exactly how a disposal is measured before you trigger one. Our cost-basis guide explains why the method you're under changes the size of every gain. Whatever you decide, keep the rationale and the figures documented, and remember that the option to elect the progressive income-tax scale instead of the flat tax is a year-by-year choice worth reviewing rather than assuming.

DeFi, NFTs and newer activity

France's core principle, tax on conversion to euros, spending, or income, rather than on every on-chain move, gives a useful mental model for newer activity, but the detail still matters and the DGFiP's guidance continues to develop. Decentralised finance can generate dozens of micro-events that each need a euro value, and the line between a non-taxable swap and a euro conversion isn't always obvious on-chain.

• DeFi, providing liquidity, lending, yield farming and reward tokens can create receipts that look like income and disposals that look like swaps. Our DeFi tax guide walks through the patterns; the French treatment turns on whether you've earned value or merely rearranged it.
• Staking and mining rewards, generally treated as income valued in euros when received, then with their own cost basis for any later disposal. See our staking guide for how reward timing is captured.
• NFTs, buying, selling and minting NFTs sit within the same digital-asset framework, but their valuation and classification can be less clear-cut than fungible tokens. Our NFT tax guide covers the moving parts.
• Airdrops and forks, receiving new tokens can be an income event depending on the circumstances, and it sets the cost basis for whatever you do with them next.

The common thread is valuation: every reward, claim or conversion needs a euro figure at the right moment, and there can be a lot of them. This is exactly the volume problem software is built to solve, rather than something to reconstruct by hand at filing time.

What if you've never reported your crypto

Plenty of French residents bought crypto years ago, swapped freely while it wasn't taxable, and never thought about the foreign-account declaration or a first euro conversion. If that's you, the position is recoverable. The starting point is to rebuild a complete history across every exchange and wallet you've ever used, so you can see which years actually produced a taxable disposal and which were purely swaps or holding. Many years may turn out to involve no reportable gain at all once the proportional method is applied properly.

Where earlier years do need correcting, France provides routes to amend or regularise prior returns, and coming forward voluntarily is generally viewed more favourably than waiting to be contacted, especially now that exchange data is increasingly shared with tax authorities across the EU. The practical obstacle is almost never willingness; it's reassembling old data before it disappears. The sooner you import and reconstruct your history, the more complete the picture you can present. Specific penalties and amendment windows should be confirmed with the DGFiP or an advisor for your situation.

How CryptaTax automates your French crypto taxes

The hard part of a French crypto return isn't the flat tax, it's maintaining the continuous, portfolio-wide history the proportional method demands, correctly deferring swaps while still tracking how they move your cost basis, and never losing sight of the accounts that need declaring. CryptaTax is built to do exactly that, so you file from real numbers instead of reconstructed ones.

• Connects your exchanges and wallets and rebuilds one unbroken transaction timeline across all of them.
• Applies France's proportional, portfolio-wide cost basis automatically, instead of a simple per-coin method.
• Defers crypto-to-crypto swaps while still updating the cost basis they affect, so euro conversions and spending are taxed and swaps aren't.
• Values mining and other income in euros at the moment of receipt and keeps it separate from capital gains.
• Flags the accounts you hold outside France so nothing is missed in your foreign-account declaration.
• Produces figures lined up with the way French gains are reported, ready to carry into your return.

More French crypto tax questions

Do I still need to file if I only swapped crypto and never cashed out?

You may have no capital gain to report, since swaps aren't a taxable event for private investors, but the foreign-account declaration can still apply to the exchanges you used, and keeping a clean record of those swaps matters because they set the cost basis for the day you do convert to euros. Treat a swap-only year as a record-keeping year, not a year you can ignore.

What happens to losses I don't use this year?

Losses on digital assets interact with gains under specific French rules, and it's worth declaring a loss year so the position is documented rather than forgotten. The precise offset and carry-forward treatment should be confirmed against current DGFiP guidance for your year, CryptaTax surfaces the loss figures so you and your advisor can apply them correctly.

Does using a crypto debit card create taxable events?

Yes, spending crypto through a card converts the asset, which is a disposal in the same way as selling for euros. Cards can generate many small disposals over a year that are easy to lose track of, which is one reason importing the full history from your provider matters more than it first appears.

How does CryptaTax know which transactions are taxable in France?

It classifies each event by type, purchase, swap, euro conversion, spend, transfer between your own wallets, or income, and then applies the French rule for that type, deferring swaps, taxing conversions and spending, and treating income separately. You review the classifications before anything is finalised, so the judgement calls stay with you while the bookkeeping is automated.