An 11–10 vote after a committee rejection
Just 35 deputies participated in the public vote on amendment I-1358: 11 supported it, 10 opposed it and 14 abstained. The measure remains part of the Assembly's first reading of the revenue portion of the 2027 finance bill, no. 3210, where it can still be changed or deleted.
Socialist deputy Laurent Lhardit filed the amendment on October 9 with 67 fellow signatories. According to 01net, the finance committee rejected it that day before lawmakers reintroduced it for the October 30 floor vote. Both the government and the committee's general rapporteur, Philippe Juvin, urged deputies to reject it.
Abstentions proved decisive. Ten Rassemblement National deputies abstained; had they opposed the amendment, it would have lost 11–20, PPC Land calculated. Four La France insoumise deputies also abstained, while two members of their group voted for it. Only five of the 68 Socialist signatories voted in favor.
PPC Land put participation at about 6% of the 574 seats listed in the voting breakdown. A subsequent vote that morning on a proposed tax on "superdividends" attracted 76 voters.
A lower rate, with proceeds redirected to the state
The proposal would establish a tax on digital data producers in the French General Tax Code. Content providers would owe €0.055 for each gigabyte sent to French internet subscribers, subject to a ceiling linked to revenue.
That is a change from the Socialists' summer 2026 proposal. As reported by 01net and MacGeneration, the earlier version called for €0.10 per gigabyte to finance French network infrastructure. The version approved by the Assembly lowers the rate and directs the proceeds to the state budget instead.
The amendment's justification identifies Google, Meta, Amazon, Netflix and Akamai as responsible for half the traffic measured by French telecom regulator Arcep. It also cites an Arcep estimate of 200 billion gigabytes delivered annually to subscribers of French internet providers, without specifying the year.
Those figures do not directly produce the authors' €10 billion revenue forecast. PPC Land calculates that 200 billion gigabytes taxed at €0.055 would generate €11 billion before caps. The amendment does not explain how its forecast was derived.
MacGeneration offers another comparison: wholesale transmission generally costs an estimated one euro cent per gigabyte. On that basis, the proposed levy would be roughly five times the wholesale cost of moving the data.
How traffic would be measured—and what remains unclear
Internet access providers would record how much data reaches their customers and identify the companies sending it. Arcep and the public finances directorate, DGFiP, would supervise that work, while DGFiP would collect the tax. The access providers would report the information rather than pay the levy themselves.
The bill for each emitter would be capped at 15% of its revenue in France or 2% of its total revenue. The wording does not resolve which ceiling applies when the two produce different amounts.
Identification is another unresolved issue. The amendment asks for an emitter's "registration number with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority" but does not specify what identifier that means. Technical collection rules would be set by a decree that has yet to be written.
Intermediaries could also complicate attribution. The justification says transit providers and content delivery networks need not identify their customers and can choose whether to pass the tax along to them. That suggests a delivery network could be treated as the emitter of traffic it carries, rather than the original publisher. The text does not explain how advertising traffic would be assigned.
Disagreement over who would bear the cost
The authors argue that data volume can serve as a measure of economic activity for businesses whose self-declared taxable profits can be located outside France. They also maintain that the measurement would protect privacy: operators would count bytes, not individual uses, without inspecting the data itself.
Lhardit told the Assembly that large global digital companies would pay most of the tax, helping restore fairness with French retailers. He argued that the design avoids obstacles encountered by similar efforts in Canada and South Korea and complies with net neutrality. For TF1, which he said broadcasts five channels over the internet, his group's estimated annual cost was €200,000 to €300,000.
Juvin's objection focused on advertisers: he warned that the largest platforms could use their market power to pass the charge on to them.
David Amiel, minister for public action and accounts, raised a different set of concerns. He said measurement would require flow sensors or counts at individual receiving terminals, unlike the authors' description of measurement within access providers' networks. He also argued that half the projected receipts—€5 billion—would come from smaller providers, including French businesses, and pointed to existing tools for taxing digital giants.
A different approach from network-funding demands
The proposal follows years of debate over whether major traffic generators should help finance telecom networks. According to 01net, Orange, Deutsche Telekom and Telefónica sought such a contribution from Brussels in 2021. The European Commission began a consultation in early 2023 but shelved the issue because there was no consensus.
The destination of the money distinguishes the current French amendment from those demands. It would raise revenue for the state, not fund the access networks that would supply the traffic measurements.
Further budget hurdles
01net and MacGeneration both describe the amendment's prospects as uncertain. The Senate's right-wing majority is considered unlikely to approve it. The government could also leave it out of the budget text it passes using Article 49.3 of the Constitution.
According to 01net, Assembly President Yaël Braun-Pivet has publicly urged Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu to use Article 49.3, a route that would allow the government to exclude the measure from the final text.
Even if the amendment survives the budget process, its collection system would still require a decree. Nor does approval establish that subscribers would face higher bills: Clubic described increases in Netflix, Disney+ or gaming-service prices as possible, rather than automatic.
