CARF: the Senate puts your cryptos abroad in the sights of the tax authorities

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The calendar has humor. The deputies are in fact resuming examination of the 2027 budget on the same day. They are expecting a tax on conversions to stablecoins and the obligation to declare large wallets. Bercy will soon have the data and perhaps the rules to use it.

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The mechanism already exists for your bank accounts. Since 2017, the OECD Common Reporting Standard (CRS) has required foreign banks to report non-resident accounts. A French person who keeps an account in Geneva is known to the DGFiP without having asked anyone.

The system is based on reciprocity. France sends to Berne what it knows about the accounts of Swiss residents in France and Switzerland returns the favor. Each country only speaks to its own tax authorities, who then sort by tax nationality.

Cryptos escaped this net. An exchange based in Singapore is not a bank and the account that a Frenchman opened there did not appear in any file. The OECD therefore published the Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF) in 2022, the same logic applied to digital assets.

Each service provider concerned collects the identity of its customers and their tax residence. It then declares for each crypto the number of operations and their total value over the year. Purchases against euros or dollars, exchanges between cryptos and outgoing transfers are included in the statement.

Bill No. 921 consists of two articles. The first authorizes the approval of the multilateral agreement on CARF, signed by France on November 26, 2024 in Asunción with 48 other states and territories. The second concerns an addendum to the banking agreement which circulates account data since 2016 income.

Why should Parliament get involved? Article 53 of the Constitution requires the green light for this type of international commitment, and without it France cannot activate trade. However, the senators will not rewrite anything. An international agreement cannot be amended in Parliament. It is approved or rejected en bloc, here after thirty minutes of speaking time divided between the groups.

The government initiated the accelerated procedure as soon as the text was tabled on July 27. The examination is therefore limited to one reading per room. The Finance Committee adopted it without modification on October 21, based on report no. 83 by Senator Emmanuel Capus.

Just before, the hemicycle examines the amendment to the France-India tax convention of 1992. India is one of the four jurisdictions which have made no commitment on the CARF, with El Salvador, Georgia and Vietnam. A process is underway with New Delhi, according to the report.

Machine-translated from French