CARF Adopted by the Senate: 5 Questions to Understand What Changes for Your Cryptos

End of the crypto blind spot for the tax authorities. The Senate voted on Tuesday, October 27, in the first reading, on the CARF bill. This international agreement allows countries to automatically exchange crypto data of their taxpayers. We presented the text earlier that morning, before the vote. The text still needs to pass before the National Assembly, on an unknown date.

Behind the acronym lies a simple mechanism. In other words, what your platform knows about you, the tax authorities will know too. The first data will arrive in 2027, regarding your operations in 2026. Here’s what this changes, in five questions.

Key Points

• The Senate voted without amendments on bill No. 921, led by Jean-Noël Barrot.
• Each year, platforms will transmit to the tax authorities the identity of their clients and their volumes by crypto.
• France is among the 46 countries that will exchange data starting in 2027, ahead of Switzerland in 2028 and the United States in 2029.
• No new tax: the flat tax of 30% and the form 3916-bis already exist, but your oversights will become visible.
• In 2025, the equivalent exchange for banks delivered 11.6 million foreign accounts to the tax authorities.

What is the CARF that the Senate has just approved?

The CARF (Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework) is a standard created by the OECD in 2022. In simple terms, it applies the CRS recipe to cryptos, the automatic exchange of banking data in place since 2017. Thus, each country collects data from its platforms and sends it to the tax authorities of the country where the clients reside.

France signed the agreement on November 26, 2024 in Asunción, with 48 other states and territories. But signing is not enough: the Constitution requires a parliamentary vote to approve a treaty. That’s why the Minister of Foreign Affairs submitted this bill on July 27, under expedited procedure.

The text consists of two articles. The first approves the CARF agreement. The second complements the banking agreement of 2014. It extends the exchange to electronic currencies and central bank digital currencies, such as the future digital euro. Finally, the rapporteur Emmanuel Capus had the entire text adopted without modification in committee, and then in session.

What will crypto platforms declare to the tax authorities?

It is the intermediaries who declare, not you. The text targets exchange platforms, brokers, traders, and even operators of crypto ATMs.

Three types of operations are reported: crypto exchanges for euros, crypto-to-crypto exchanges, and transfers, including airdrops and staking income. The platform then sums everything by crypto, with inflows on one side and outflows on the other. However, a crypto payment at a merchant only appears as a separate line beyond $50,000.

On the identity side, the platform transmits your name, address, and country of tax residence. It adds your tax number, the one that appears on your tax notice. Then, for each crypto, it indicates the number of transactions, quantities, and total value. Stablecoins, crypto derivatives, and certain NFTs are also included in the scope.

The Senate report does not hide the objective. The tax authorities want to identify undeclared capital gains, the use of foreign platforms, and transfers to personal wallets. According to the report, many taxpayers already forget to declare their crypto accounts opened abroad.

When do the first exchanges arrive in France?

French law has already set the schedule. Indeed, the finance law for 2025 has integrated the European directive DAC8 into French law. A decree from December 19, 2025, then specified the details. Since January 1, 2026, platforms established in the EU will therefore record your transactions. They will submit their first declaration in 2027.

The CARF is extending this system to the rest of the world. Tax authorities exchange files once a year, within nine months following the end of the year. For France, the first files from abroad will arrive in 2027, concerning your operations from 2026.

However, Emmanuel Capus adds a nuance in his report: << The mere signing of the agreement is not enough to automatically make exchanges operational >>. Each country must first confirm to each of its partners that it is ready to exchange. Moreover, France will require them to comply with the GDPR, the European data protection rules.

Which platforms and countries are involved?

As of September 14, 2026, 77 countries and territories have made a commitment. Forty-six will start exchanging in 2027, with France leading the way, alongside Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, Japan, and Canada. Twenty-seven will follow in 2028, including Switzerland, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, and Hong Kong. Finally, four will wait until 2029, including the United States. They have not signed the agreement but have promised to transmit their data starting from that date.

In practice, Binance in France, Kraken in Ireland, or Coinbase in Luxembourg will declare your accounts. These companies are already applying the DAC8 directive. Conversely, four countries have made no commitments: El Salvador, Georgia, India, and Vietnam.

To measure the scale, one only needs to look at bank accounts. In 2025, 109 countries transmitted data to France on 11.6 million accounts, totaling 456 billion euros. For crypto, the rapporteur finds the volume << difficult to assess at this stage >>. According to Adan, one in ten French adults held cryptocurrencies at the beginning of 2025. The total was estimated between 21 and 26 billion euros.

What do you need to do before 2027?

Nothing new on the tax front. The CARF does not create any tax; it makes omissions visible. Your sales of cryptocurrencies for euros still incur a flat tax of 30% beyond 305 euros of sales per year. Conversely, an exchange of one cryptocurrency for another remains untaxed as long as you do not convert back to euros. However, it will appear in the files, which will help the tax authorities reconstruct your positions.

The most commonly forgotten obligation concerns accounts. You must declare every year any crypto account opened, used, or closed abroad on form 3916-bis, even if empty. The omission costs 750 euros per account, and 1,500 euros if its value exceeded 50,000 euros in the year. With the CARF, it is the platform itself that will report a forgotten Kraken or Bitstamp account.

No one declares your personal wallet, the one for which you alone hold the keys, as no intermediary manages it. But the platform will declare each transfer to this wallet, with the amount and value. The tax authorities will thus know what has left, without knowing what you did with it.

As for the past, platforms will first transmit your operations from 2026. For previous years, correcting your declarations limits penalties. Since June, Bercy can also sell your cryptocurrencies directly on your platform to recover a tax debt.

The text is now going to the National Assembly, where deputies are concurrently examining crypto amendments to the 2027 budget. They will vote on the first part of this budget on November 3. For their part, European platforms will submit their first declaration in spring 2027. Data from Singapore or Zurich will follow a year later.