France Says Show Your Self-Custody Wallet or Pay €10K — Liberté, Égalité, Déclaré

France’s finance committee has approved amendment I-CF821, a proposal that would require residents and entities to disclose self-custody crypto wallets holding at least €100,000 in digital assets, with noncompliance fines set at €10,000. The measure, introduced during the French budget examination in 2027 by Charles de Courson, Jean-Pierre Bataille and Michel Castellani, expands the scope of Article 1649 bis C of the French tax code, which already obliges certain taxpayers to report foreign-based crypto account providers. Under the proposal, qualifying holdings would be calculated using the value of assets on December 31 of each year and reported alongside annual income or business tax returns.

The amendment would modify existing disclosure rules by capturing wallets controlled by taxpayers without custodial intermediaries. French law already caps qualifying first violations at €5,000 under existing tax provisions, but the new framework raises the maximum penalty for unreported self-custody holdings to €10,000. Lawmakers framed the reporting threshold and penalty structure as part of a broader push to bring private digital asset holdings into the national tax base.

The committee vote places the amendment in line with parallel regulatory activity from France’s financial markets authority, which in July finalised the migration to comply with the European Union’s MiCA framework for crypto service providers. Earlier reporting on Binance’s French licensing situation outlined restrictions on exchange services following that MiCA compliance deadline, signaling a tightening posture toward both centralized platforms and self-hosted wallet users.

If enacted, the proposal would shift disclosure obligations away from custodial providers and onto individual holders of qualifying wallets. Taxpayers would be required to identify each covered self-custody wallet and its underlying assets as part of standard filings, with French tax authorities empowered to levy the €10,000 fine for failures to declare holdings that meet the €100,000 threshold. The amendment now moves forward within the broader 2027 budget review process, where its final form will be determined.

No changes to existing reporting requirements for custodial crypto accounts have been announced alongside the self-custody amendment, and no official statement has been issued by the French finance ministry beyond the committee’s approval of I-CF821.