Taxing the Trade, Not the Share: The €11bn Gamble in France's Stock-Tax Vote

1. Thirty-three votes to rewrite a tax

The amendment that passed on Monday 2 November does far more than nudge a rate. During the afternoon sitting on the revenue half of the 2027 budget, the Assemblée nationale adopted amendment I-2527, tabled by Aurélien Le Coq of La France insoumise (LFI) with 69 co-signatories, by 33 votes to 26, with 37 abstentions. The government and the budget's rapporteur général, Philippe Juvin of the Droite républicaine, both opposed it, though the finance committee had backed a similar LFI version.

On paper the change is simple. The taxe sur les transactions financières (TTF) on share purchases would rise from 0.4% to 0.5%, a 25% increase: a €1,000 order would carry €5 of tax instead of €4. Same-day trading, outside the tax today, would pay 0.1%, and derivatives 0.01% of their notional value. LFI's explanatory note says the package could raise "jusqu'à 11 milliards d'euros supplémentaires par an", up to €11bn more a year.

The deeper change is who falls in the net. Today the tax follows the issuer: it applies to purchases of shares in the 121 French-headquartered listed companies worth more than €1bn on 1 December 2025, wherever the buyer is. The amendment drops that test and taxes the purchase or sale of any "instrument financier", including ETFs, bonds and foreign shares, when at least one party is established in France and a financial institution with its registered office in France takes part. It would turn a tax on French shares into a tax on French trades.

The majority rested on an abstention. The four left-wing groups supplied 32 of the 33 votes for; the centre and the right cast the 26 against. The Rassemblement national (RN), the largest group, abstained: had its 32 deputies in the vote opposed it, the amendment would have failed by 33 to 58.

2. Each rise has paid, up to a point

LFI's strongest argument is the tax's own record. It came into force at 0.2% on 1 August 2012, rose to 0.3% in January 2017 and to 0.4% on 1 April 2025. When the rate rose by half in 2017, receipts rose by 54%. In 2025, with only nine months at the new rate, they reached €2.53bn, up 36% on 2024. In its report of 10 September 2026 the Cour des comptes, France's public audit court, found that "la taxe n'a pas provoqué la perturbation majeure du marché que redoutaient ses détracteurs": it did not cause the major disruption its critics had feared.

The same report points to a ceiling. Volumes in taxed shares fell by an estimated 10% to 20% after 2012, and a study by AMAFI, which represents market firms, found a relative fall of about 10% after the 2025 rise, a figure the Cour treats with caution because of US tariffs. On 2 November both camps cited figures the Cour takes from a model by the economist Eduardo Dávila, which puts the rate that best serves collective welfare at 0.37% and the rate that maximises revenue at 0.78%. Mr Juvin invoked the first. Karim Ben Cheikh, an Ecologist who wanted 0.6%, invoked the second and retorted: "Vous nous promettez quasiment les dix plaies d'Égypte à chaque fois, et rien ne se vérifie" (you promise us almost the ten plagues of Egypt every time, and none comes true).

3. A tax paid mostly from abroad

Follow the money and today's tax turns out to be largely exported. From 2017 to 2025 investors based abroad, mainly in Britain, Germany and the United States, accounted for about three-quarters of receipts, and intermediaries established outside France declared 46.8% of them, the Cour found. Who finally bears the cost, it adds, is undetermined.

The amendment could reverse that pattern. On our reading of the text, a trade in a French share between two foreign investors using foreign brokers, which the issuer test catches today, would fall outside the tax, while a French saver buying an ETF through a French bank would fall inside it. The text covers "l'achat ou la vente", so on its wording sales would be taxed too, and, as today, there is no exemption for the PEA, the tax-favoured share account. In the second quarter of 2025, 834,000 individuals bought or sold shares and 415,000 traded ETFs through institutions operating in France, according to the AMF, the markets regulator.

The obvious exit is the foreign broker. Because the test turns on an institution "disposant de son siège social en France", a French investor using a broker based elsewhere could avoid the tax if no French institution is involved, as the French investing site Cryptoast points out. On our reading, a French branch of a foreign bank would not be enough.

4. Eleven billion needs a base that can leave

The €11bn hope only adds up if the business it targets stays in Paris. By Le Détroit's calculation it is more than four times what the tax raised in 2025. A plain rise to 0.5% on today's base would add about €0.6bn to €0.7bn a year before any fall in volumes. Raised entirely at 0.5%, €11bn would require some €2,200bn a year of newly taxed transactions, almost three times the €780bn on which the tax was levied in 2025. Even figures cited on the left point lower: Oxfam's estimate, quoted by LFI, that €100 of tax escapes "chaque seconde" comes to about €3.2bn a year, and Nicolas Sansu of the left-wing GDR group put his own broader version at nearly €4bn in all.

The money exists on paper. Some €9,284bn of share transactions were declared to Euroclear France, the central depository that collects the tax, in 2025, and 92% of them were exempt. Temporary transfers such as repos and securities lending made up €5,021bn and market making €2,740bn. The rewritten article keeps exemptions only for share issues and for clearing houses and central depositories, so this thin-margin business is where most of the new base would lie. Mr Ben Cheikh also cited €2.2bn of unexplained gaps between tax due and tax paid from 2017 to 2025, which the Cour says cannot yet be counted as lost revenue.

It is also the most mobile. The Cour warned that, "du fait d'une assiette mobile", a change poorly assessed and too far out of step with other countries "risquerait de se traduire, non pas par des recettes supplémentaires, mais par une baisse du produit collecté", lower receipts rather than higher ones. Citing the Cour, Mr Juvin argued that taxing intraday trades, which involve no transfer of ownership, would probably push the activity to other European venues. David Amiel, the minister for public action and public accounts, defended collection by Euroclear, saying that handing it to the tax administration "serait long et coûteux", slow and costly.

5. Paris would be going it alone

France would be raising its toll just as Europe's common project is shelved. It already levies one of the continent's higher share taxes, and 0.5% would match Britain's stamp duty. Italy doubled its levy on listed shares to 0.2% in January 2026, Spain charges 0.2% and Belgium 0.35%, capped at €1,600 a trade. Most of these follow the issuer, as France's does today. Belgium's, which also covers bonds and funds, is closer to LFI's design and reaches further: residents owe it even through a foreign broker, a case LFI's text would miss.

The European route is closing. The Commission proposed a common tax in February 2013, with minimum rates of 0.1% and 0.01%, and a scope test that I-2527 closely echoes, minus its fallback on where an instrument was issued. Talks among ten countries stalled, and in its 2026 work programme, published in October 2025, the Commission said it intended to withdraw the proposal. LFI's note cites that retreat as a reason for France to act alone.

Chart 5

Europe's toll gates on share trades

Headline rate on a standard purchase of domestic shares, and the stalled EU project

Hover or tap the shapes for details

IrelandStamp duty, Irish shares

1%

Ireland: 1%Stamp duty on transfers of Irish sharesAs listed in the Cour des comptes comparison, September 2026

United KingdomStamp duty reserve tax, UK shares

0.5%

United Kingdom: 0.5%Stamp Duty Reserve Tax on electronic purchases of UK shares; stamp duty on paper transfers over £1,0001.5% on transfers into some depositary receipt or clearance schemesNot normally due on foreign shares bought outside the UK

FranceTTF today, and under I-2527

0.4% → 0.5%

France: 0.4% today, 0.5% under I-2527Today: purchases of shares in 121 French companies worth over €1bn, wherever the buyer isI-2527: any financial instrument, when a party is established in France and a French-headquartered institution takes partPlus 0.1% on intraday trades and 0.01% on derivatives

BelgiumStock-exchange tax, capped

0.35%

Belgium: 0.35% on sharesCapped at €1,600 per transaction0.12% on bonds (cap €1,300); 1.32% on some funds (cap €4,000)Residents trading through a foreign broker that does not withhold it must declare and pay it themselves

ItalyListed Italian shares, since Jan 2026

0.2%

Italy: 0.2% on listed sharesDoubled from 0.1% on 1 January 2026; 0.4% on other transfersIssuers worth more than €500mFixed charges on derivatives; 0.04% on high-frequency orders cancelled or modified above a threshold

SpainSpanish shares, firms over €1bn

0.2%

Spain: 0.2%Purchases of listed Spanish shares in companies worth more than €1bn

SwitzerlandStamp duty, Swiss securities

0.15%

Switzerland: 0.15%0.3% on foreign securitiesAs listed in the Cour des comptes comparison

EU

EU proposal, 2013Minimum rate; never adopted

0.1%

EU proposal of 14 February 2013Enhanced cooperation among 11 states, 10 after Estonia left in March 2016Minimum 0.1% on financial instruments and 0.01% on derivativesStalled; the Commission said in its 2026 work programme it intends to withdraw it

00.25%0.5%0.75%1%

Scopes differ: some taxes follow the issuer, others the buyer's residence or the intermediary, and several exempt intermediaries or cap the charge. Rates shown are for a standard on-exchange purchase.

6. Le Détroit's reading

The tax's record supports LFI's case for it, and undercuts the promise of €11bn. France has shown it can tax share purchases without breaking its market, because the tax rests on a narrow, sticky base: French blue chips that investors worldwide hold. The €11bn would come from the opposite kind of base, repo financing, market making, day trading and derivatives, which is mobile, and from a territorial test that could release part of the foreign trades that pay three-quarters of today's tax. The likely winners would be foreign funds and brokers; the losers French banks, market makers in French shares and savers who hold ETFs through French accounts.

The amendment is unlikely to survive: the government opposes it, the revenue part may be rejected outright and a 49.3 would let ministers drop it. A plain rate rise would be harder to dismiss, and on our arithmetic would raise about €0.6bn to €0.7bn. Two signals will show which way it goes: whether the revenue part survives its coming vote, and whether any change to the tax appears in a text the government forces through.