France's National Assembly on October 30, 2026 adopted an amendment to the 2027 finance bill that would charge content providers €0.055 for every gigabyte of data they send to internet subscribers in France. Its Socialist authors expect the levy to raise €10 billion. Amendment I-1358 passed by 11 votes to 10, with 14 abstentions, in a chamber where only 35 deputies took part in the vote. The government and the general rapporteur of the finance committee both argued against it.

Internet access providers would measure the volumes, the public finances directorate would collect the money, and the bill would be capped at 15% of a company's French revenue or 2% of its total revenue. The amendment's written justification names Google, Meta, Amazon, Netflix and Akamai as the five companies that account for half of the data traffic measured by Arcep, the French telecoms regulator. Nothing has been enacted. The vote is one step in the first reading of the first part of finance bill no 3210, and the text can still be rewritten or removed.

All quotations below from the debate record, the amendment and the French technology site Clubic are PPC Land translations from French.

In Short

French lawmakers voted for a new tax that would make companies such as Netflix, Google and Meta pay about 5.5 euro cents for every gigabyte of data they send into homes in France. Internet providers would count the data, the sending companies would pay, and the authors expect about €10 billion from it. The budget rapporteur warned the biggest platforms could pass the cost on to advertisers. Nothing changes for now, because the vote is an early step in a long budget process and the government opposes the idea.

What amendment I-1358 would create

The amendment was filed on Friday, October 9, 2026, by Laurent Lhardit, a deputy in the Socialistes et apparentés group, and carries 68 names in total, including former President François Hollande, Olivier Faure and Boris Vallaud. The vote record lists the group with 68 members. The text would add a new Chapter XXI to Title II of the first part of Book One of the French General Tax Code, titled tax on digital data producers ("taxe sur les producteurs de données numériques"), spread across four new articles numbered 302 bis ZP to 302 bis ZS.

Article 302 bis ZP establishes the principle in one sentence: a tax "based on the flows of digital data emitted by content providers and paid by them."

Article 302 bis ZQ assigns the measuring. Internet access providers, and "any company offering an internet access service to households and businesses," would set up "a consolidated and anonymised collection procedure for the quantities of data transiting to their customers, identifying the emitter of that data." The work would be supervised by Arcep and by the direction générale des finances publiques (DGFiP), the tax administration. Each record would contain the identity of the emitting company, "its registration number with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority" and the quantity of data emitted over the period. The article adds a limit: "No record relating to the content of the data or to its destination may be required." Results would go to the DGFiP every quarter, and the technical details would be set later by decree.

The same article deals with delivery infrastructure. When an emitter uses a content delivery network to cache material close to end users, "the quantity of data emitted is considered equal to the sum of the flows leaving the delivery network."

Article 302 bis ZR sets the arithmetic: the tax equals the volume of data, expressed in gigabytes and recorded by the access providers, multiplied by €0.055. A second paragraph introduces the cap: the tax "is subject to a ceiling corresponding at most to 15% of the turnover achieved in France by the emitter or to 2% of its total turnover."

Article 302 bis ZS covers payment. Groups with an entity established in France would pay "according to the same procedures as corporate tax." Groups without one would pay in euros by March 30 of the year after the data was emitted, on the basis of a tax notice issued by the DGFiP by January 30.

Points the text leaves open

Several elements of the drafting are not settled by the text itself. The cap offers two thresholds joined by "or" without saying whether the lower or the higher applies when they differ. A company with modest French sales and large global revenue would face very different ceilings under each reading.

The identifier is another. IANA does not register companies one by one: it allocates blocks of autonomous system numbers to five regional internet registries, which then assign them to individual networks. The amendment does not say whether its "registration number with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority" means such a network number, and the decree that would define the collection method does not yet exist.

Then there is the question of who pays when an intermediary sits in the middle. The written justification states that "transit providers and CDNs have no obligation to name their customers. They re-invoice the tax to them or not, according to their conditions of sale, in compliance with business secrecy." That wording implies the delivery network, not the original publisher, would be the identified emitter for traffic it carries. Akamai, one of the five companies named, is itself a delivery network. The text does not address how advertising traffic would be attributed, for instance video ad files served by third-party ad servers through such networks.

The case for a volume-based levy

The written justification ("exposé sommaire") frames the measure as a correction between two parts of the economy. On one side is what it calls the established economy of shops, factories and services, which "occupies premises, employs staff in France" and pays for public services "because its tax base is physically located inside the territory." On the other is a "deterritorialised economy" that "sells to the same customers, uses the same infrastructure, benefits from the same public services, but its tax base is a self-declared profit, that is to say an accounting entry whose location it decides according to its interests."

The authors' answer is to use data volume as "a proxy for their activity." According to the amendment, Arcep estimates traffic sent to subscribers of French internet access providers at 200 billion gigabytes a year. The text does not say which year that estimate covers. "At the rate of €0.055 per giga, a yield of €10bn is expected," the justification states.

PPC Land's own arithmetic shows the gap between those two figures: 200 billion gigabytes at €0.055 gives €11 billion before any cap applies. The amendment does not explain how the €10 billion projection was derived, though the cap is described as a way "to take account of sectors that structurally have a high ratio of data emitted per euro of turnover, such as video on demand or video games." That category would include subscription video on demand services, whose business is the delivery of large video files.

Measurement, privacy and the Euroclear model

The authors acknowledge where the weight of the proposal rests. "The legal and political credibility of the mechanism rests entirely on the ability to measure this volume in a precise, reproducible and auditable way," the justification reads. It then argues that "the challenge is not technical: flow measurement is an industrial standard used daily," since many operators already bill on the basis of data passing through their infrastructure.

Consumer access providers, the text continues, "see all of the downstream traffic to their subscribers" and are therefore "the most complete observation point" for traffic delivered in France. Measurement would take place "at specific points of their network." The text counts "4 robust players" in France, without naming them.

On privacy, the justification is categorical: "This model raises no privacy issue: the data is never consulted." It says the tax involves no deep packet inspection and no audit of personal subscriber data, and that it respects the secrecy of correspondence and the GDPR: "bytes are counted per operator, not individual uses."

The collection design borrows from France's financial transactions tax. According to the amendment, the access providers would not pay the levy. They would only report the information needed to collect it, "on a model that may be compared to that of Euroclear collecting the financial transactions tax for the State under DGFiP supervision."

There is also an environmental argument. The authors say the tax would push content providers toward better compression and optimisation of the data they send. "For now they do not, since the network works for them like a pipe with no volume limit," the text states.

The debate: one minute per speaker

Amendment 1358 was the first item of business when the sitting chaired by vice-president Marie-Agnès Poussier-Winsback opened at 9:00 on Friday, October 30. On Wednesday evening, the Assembly had stopped at the same amendment, which was being examined by priority after Article 15 of the bill.

Before the debate began, Socialist deputy Mickaël Bouloux raised a point of order. The conference of presidents had limited interventions to one minute, and Bouloux asked the chair to grant two. "Laurent Lhardit's amendment no 1358 introduces a tax on digital data flows. It is an unprecedented mechanism whose base, anonymised measurements, cap and yields must be able to be explained," Bouloux said. The chair replied that speakers could come back after the initial presentation.

Lhardit then presented the measure. "This amendment proposes to introduce a tax on the digital data flows emitted by content providers, payable by them. Its yield is estimated at 10 billion euros. The tax would be mainly paid by the globalised digital giants, since they emit the vast majority of the flows sent to internet subscribers in France," the deputy told the chamber.

The deputy argued that the levy would restore fairness between French retailers, "which are suffering so much today," and "the American and Asian e-commerce giants, which largely escape tax if one considers the financial value they draw from their activities on the French market." Lhardit also claimed it would avoid the problems that sank similar efforts abroad. "This mechanism overcomes the obstacles that caused similar attempts to fail in Canada or South Korea. It rests on a physical volume measured in France, at the entrance to the networks, which is incontestable. It also respects the principle of net neutrality. It is therefore technically, legally and fiscally robust."

The advertiser warning

Philippe Juvin, general rapporteur of the finance committee, gave the committee's view in three sentences. "The Gafam - I repeat - have disproportionate market power. The risk is that they pass the weight of this tax on to advertisers. Unfavourable opinion."

David Amiel, minister for public action and accounts, also opposed it, on three grounds. The first was technical. "If I understand its various technical specifics correctly, the mechanism you propose would require flow sensors, or at the very least measuring these flows at the level of individual receiving terminals," Amiel said. That reading differs from the amendment's justification, which places measurement at points inside the access providers' networks.

The second was about who would pay. "Moreover, half of the tax - still 5 billion euros according to your proposal - would not fall on the large digital companies but on smaller content providers, notably French providers," the minister said.

The third was that other instruments already exist. "We have instruments to tax the digital giants - notably the Gafam, mentioned by the general rapporteur - and we have debated the digital services tax (TSN)," Amiel said, before Nicolas Sansu, a deputy in the Gauche Démocrate et Républicaine group, interrupted: "Its increase was not voted!" Amiel continued with competition policy, telling deputies that "the European Commission has just imposed a fine on Google on the basis of competition law provisions governing abuse of a dominant position. This fine of 4.1 billion euros paid into the budget of the European Union will also ease the effort of national taxpayers."

The amount matches the Android fine that the EU Court of Justice upheld in full at €4.125 billion on July 2, 2026, in a case that began with a Commission decision of July 18, 2018. The minister did not name the case.

Lhardit's reply

Lhardit answered by addressing an argument about consumers, not advertisers. "The rapporteur keeps objecting that the taxes will be passed on to consumers. Yet I fail to see how a tax could be passed on to users of Facebook, Instagram or TikTok, since these services are free," Lhardit said, while the rapporteur signalled disagreement, according to the record. Ecologist deputy Eva Sas called out: "Exactly!"

Lhardit then gave the only company-level cost estimate in the debate. "Contrary to what the minister says, the proposed tax would not weigh that much on our country's platforms. Thus, according to our assessment, its cost for the TF1 group, which broadcasts five channels via the internet, would be between 200,000 and 300,000 euros. That is entirely negligible!"

The Socialist deputy also restated the concentration figure. "You do not seem aware of the fact that today, in France, five major platforms account for half of the flow entering subscribers' boxes and that, if twenty other foreign platforms are added, they total between 75 and 80% of internet flows on French territory."

The Socialist group requested a public vote. The result: 35 voters, 21 votes cast, an absolute majority of 11, 11 for and 10 against. The record notes applause from the Socialist benches, joined by Nicolas Sansu.

How 11 votes beat 10

The analysis of public vote no 9336 shows how narrow and how thinly attended the decision was.

Group For Against Abstained
Socialistes et apparentés (68 members) 5 0 0
La France insoumise - NFP (70) 2 0 4
Écologiste et Social (38) 2 0 0
Gauche Démocrate et Républicaine (17) 2 0 0
Ensemble pour la République (90) 0 4 0
Droite Républicaine (47) 0 5 0
Les Démocrates (37) 0 1 0
Rassemblement National (121) 0 0 10

The 11 votes in favour came from Belkhir Belhaddad, Mickaël Bouloux, Laurent Lhardit, Estelle Mercier and Anna Pic for the Socialists; Éric Coquerel, the finance committee president, and Abdelkader Lahmar for La France insoumise; Arnaud Bonnet and Eva Sas for the Ecologists; and Karine Lebon and Nicolas Sansu for the Gauche Démocrate et Républicaine group. Against were Jean-Luc Fugit, Daniel Labaronne, Paul Midy and Joséphine Missoffe for Ensemble pour la République; Anne-Laure Blin, Philippe Juvin, Corentin Le Fur, Vincent Rolland and Nicolas Tryzna for the Droite Républicaine; and Sophie Mette for Les Démocrates. Assembly President Yaël Braun-Pivet and the chair of the sitting are recorded as non-voting. Horizons, LIOT, the UDR group and non-attached deputies cast no votes.

The Rassemblement National decided the outcome by abstaining. Ten of its deputies were present. Had they voted against, the amendment would have failed by 11 votes to 20, by PPC Land's count. Four La France insoumise deputies also abstained, even though two colleagues from the same group voted in favour.

Attendance was low even by the standards of the same sitting. The group breakdown lists 574 seats, so 35 voters represent about 6% of the chamber, by PPC Land's calculation. A later vote that morning, on a tax on "superdividends" (amendment 3944), drew 76 voters. And while all 68 Socialist deputies signed amendment I-1358, five of them were in the chamber to vote for it.

What the numbers imply

Clubic, which published its report at 18:46 on October 30 under the byline of Mathieu Grumiaux, translated the rate into consumer terms. Downloading a 100-gigabyte video game would theoretically represent €5.50 of tax for the company distributing the data, and a 200-gigabyte title, the estimated size of GTA VI according to Clubic, would cost €11. "For a streaming platform distributing billions of gigabytes each year, the sums could quickly become considerable," Clubic wrote.

Lhardit's TF1 estimate can be turned around. A bill of €200,000 to €300,000 at €0.055 per gigabyte implies TF1 delivers between roughly 3.6 billion and 5.5 billion gigabytes a year to French subscribers, by PPC Land's calculation. The deputy did not say how the Socialist group produced the figure.

The minister and the author partly agree on the arithmetic but not on who sits in the second half. If five platforms send half of the 200 billion gigabytes, their share before caps is about €5.5 billion at the proposed rate, PPC Land calculates. Amiel described the other half, €5 billion, as falling on smaller providers, including French ones. Lhardit said 20 more foreign platforms bring the total to 75-80% of traffic, which would leave a smaller share for everyone else.

For scale, Amazon CloudFront's list price for delivery in North America and Europe starts at $0.085 per gigabyte for the first 10 terabytes a month, based on AWS rates compiled by EgressCost in August 2026. The proposed tax would sit on top of whatever a content provider already pays to deliver its data.

Why advertisers are in the frame

Juvin's objection was specific: the pass-through risk the rapporteur named was to advertisers, not subscribers. Lhardit's reply that Facebook, Instagram and TikTok are free to users did not address that channel. All three are funded mainly by advertising.

The marketing industry has seen how platforms handle national digital levies before. From November 2020, Google Ads began invoicing extra taxes on ads served in Austria, the UK and Turkey, added on top of the budget spent. When Canada introduced its own digital services tax, Google added a 2.5% surcharge on ads displayed in Canada from October 1, 2024, calculated on the media cost of impressions served there regardless of where the advertiser was based. Amazon extended its regulatory advertising fees to Canada at 3% from August 15, 2024, adding Canada to a list of countries where the fees already applied, France among them. Ottawa later announced on June 29, 2025 that it would rescind the tax to advance trade talks with Washington, and the same report put France's digital services tax at 3%.

US states have moved in the same direction with different bases. Washington began charging sales tax on advertising services on October 1, 2025, and Illinois lawmakers passed a 10% tax on gross receipts from targeted advertising on June 1, 2026, in a budget bill that schedules the levies for January 1, 2027.

Amendment I-1358 differs from all of these in one respect. Its base is not revenue but volume. A video-heavy service would owe tax according to the gigabytes it pushes into French homes, regardless of how much advertising revenue those gigabytes earn, until the cap tied to revenue applies. For ad-supported streaming, where advertisements are themselves video files, how ad delivery is counted would matter. The text, as noted above, does not say.

Echoes of the network fee fight

Lhardit presented the measure as distinct from failed attempts in Canada and South Korea, and as compatible with net neutrality. It also differs from the commercial disputes between European telecoms operators and large content companies over who pays for carrying traffic.

Those disputes have played out between companies. In September 2024, Meta announced it was ending direct peering with Deutsche Telekom, objecting to the fees the operator demanded, while Deutsche Telekom said Meta had stopped paying for direct connections during the pandemic. In November 2025, Vodafone announced its withdrawal from public internet exchanges in Germany, moving its peering to arrangements that charge by data volume.

In the French proposal the money goes to the state, not to the networks. "The contribution is ultimately not paid by the access providers, which only take part in reporting the information needed to collect it," the justification states. Clubic made a similar observation, noting that the proposal "recalls previous debates about taxing the bandwidth of large platforms, even if the mechanism chosen this time is based on the volumes actually transmitted."

What happens next

The vote does not create a tax. The amendment sits in the first part of the 2027 finance bill, at first reading in the Assembly, and the government opposes it. Even if it survives, the collection method would depend on a decree that has not been written.

Time is also a factor. Later in the same sitting, Éric Coquerel warned colleagues about the pace of the debate. "We have examined a third of the amendments in fifty hours. At this rate, we will need a hundred and twenty hours to examine the remaining two thirds," Coquerel said. Taking into account the November 11 holiday and other texts on the agenda, including the end-of-year budget bill, "it is possible that we will not finish the examination within the forty-day deadline." Under Article 47 of the French Constitution, if the Assembly has not ruled on a finance bill at first reading within 40 days of its tabling, the government refers it to the Senate.

Clubic summed up the status plainly: "The adoption of the amendment is only one stage in the examination of the 2027 budget." It also listed the open questions. "First, the tax would not only concern the American giants. French companies could also be affected, notably in the streaming and video game sectors." On prices, it concluded that "an increase in Netflix, Disney+ or gaming service subscriptions therefore remains a possibility, not an automatic consequence."

Clubic described the measure as "an idea that is original, to say the least, defended in the name of a better contribution from the digital giants to public finances," and asked the question the debate itself did not settle: "who will end up paying?"

Timeline

Summary

Who: Socialist deputy Laurent Lhardit and 67 co-signatories from the Socialistes et apparentés group in France's National Assembly, opposed by minister David Amiel and general rapporteur Philippe Juvin. The amendment's authors name Google, Meta, Amazon, Netflix and Akamai as the main payers; internet access providers would measure the traffic.

What: Amendment I-1358 to the 2027 finance bill creates a tax of €0.055 per gigabyte of data that content providers send to French internet subscribers, capped at 15% of French revenue or 2% of total revenue, with an expected yield of €10 billion. It was adopted by 11 votes to 10 with 14 abstentions, with 35 deputies voting.

When: The amendment was filed on October 9, 2026 and adopted in the first sitting of Friday, October 30, 2026.

Where: The National Assembly in Paris, during the first reading of the first part of finance bill no 3210. The tax would apply to data delivered to subscribers in France.

Why: The authors say the established economy pays tax on a territorial base while global digital companies declare profits where they choose, and that data volume is a base that cannot be moved. The government says the tax would hit smaller and French providers for €5 billion and that other tools exist, while the rapporteur warns the largest platforms could pass the cost on to advertisers.