France’s Proposed €0.055-per-GB Data Tax

Thirty-five deputies were in the room. Eleven voted yes, ten voted no, fourteen abstained, and with that thin margin the French National Assembly adopted amendment I-1358 on Friday, October 30, 2026, a per-gigabyte tax on internet traffic that the government had argued against and the finance committee had already thrown out. The sponsor was Socialist deputy Laurent Lhardit. The chamber was nearly empty. The text, if it survives, would charge content providers EUR 0.055 for every gigabyte they send to French internet subscribers.

Netflix, Meta, Amazon, Google, and Akamai are named in the amendment’s justification as examples of large senders. None of them has published a tax bill under the text, because the text is not law.

What amendment I-1358 would charge

Public vote no. 9336, from the first sitting of Friday 30 October 2026, records 35 voters, 21 votes cast, an absolute majority of 11, 11 in favor, 10 against, and 14 abstentions. The official scrutin shows Rassemblement National abstaining with 10 members present, and five votes in favor from the Socialist group. Le Figaro reported adoption against the government’s advice, after the finance committee had already rejected the amendment. The sponsor is Socialist deputy Laurent Lhardit. The PDF is dated 9 October 2026 and marked adopted.

The text would add Chapter XXI to the general tax code, titled “taxe sur les producteurs de donnees numeriques,” across articles 302 bis ZP to 302 bis ZS. Article 302 bis ZP states the principle: a tax on digital data flows emitted by content providers and paid by them. Article 302 bis ZR sets the arithmetic. The sender owes the sum of gigabytes recorded by access providers, multiplied by EUR 0.055. Internet subscribers do not pay the administration. Access providers do not pay it either. They measure.

Article 302 bis ZQ puts measurement with internet access providers, and with any firm offering access to households and businesses, under the supervision of Arcep and the direction generale des finances publiques (DGFiP). Each record would carry the emitting company’s identity, what the text calls its registration number with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, and the quantity of data. No record of content or of destination may be required. Results would go to the DGFiP each quarter. Technical rules would come later, by decree. That decree does not exist.

When the sender uses a content delivery network, the quantity of data emitted is treated as the sum of flows leaving that network. PPC Land, working from the amendment and the debate record, notes that the written justification says transit providers and CDNs have no obligation to name their customers, and may re-invoice the charge or not. Akamai is one of five names in the justification, and it is itself a delivery network. The text does not say how an ad file served by a third party through that network would be attributed.

Payment splits by presence. Groups with an entity in France would pay on the same timetable as corporate tax. Groups without one would pay in euros by 30 March of the year after the data was emitted, on a notice the DGFiP would issue by 30 January. Le Figaro named Orange, SFR, Bouygues Telecom, and Free as the access providers that see the traffic. The amendment itself counts “4 solid players” and does not name them.

National arithmetic, then per-unit bill

The authors’ justification puts traffic sent to subscribers of French access providers at 200 billion gigabytes a year, and expects a yield of EUR 10 billion at EUR 0.055 per gigabyte. That 200 billion gigabyte total is the authors’ figure in the amendment. La Voix du Nord reported that EUR 10 billion figure on 30 October 2026 and stressed that the vote is still far from definitive adoption. PPC Land’s multiplication of the same inputs is 200 billion gigabytes times EUR 0.055, which is EUR 11 billion before any cap. The amendment does not show how the authors got from EUR 11 billion to EUR 10 billion. The justification describes the cap as a tool for sectors with a high ratio of data per euro of turnover, and it names video on demand and video games.

Those 200 billion gigabytes are the amendment’s figure. The text does not say which year they cover. The latest Arcep print is a different unit. The amendment’s justification says the same five names account for half of the traffic Arcep measures. On the floor, Lhardit said that adding twenty other foreign platforms would bring the total to between 75% and 80% of flows on French territory. That 75% to 80% range is his statement in the debate, as reported by PPC Land, not a line in the Arcep release.

The 2026 Arcep report measures incoming traffic in terabits per second at interconnection points. The amendment’s tax base is gigabytes delivered to subscribers, a different cut of the same pipes.

Per-unit charges already published against the statutory rate are small next to the national yield, and they are not tax bills for named companies. Power Up Gaming calculated an uncapped charge of EUR 5.50 on a 100 GB download, EUR 11 on 200 GB, and EUR 2.75 on a further 50 GB update, and it labeled those sizes as illustrations, not confirmed game specs. Mac4ever put one hour of 4K, at up to 7 GB, at nearly EUR 0.40, and a 210 GB game file at EUR 11.55. Frandroid reported that VideoLAN said on X on 30 October 2026 the charge would cost the association more than EUR 1 million a year, which Frandroid translated as a bit more than 18 million GB.

Read the table as uncapped arithmetic, not as an invoice. A 100 GB download is EUR 5.50. A 200 GB download is EUR 11. A 50 GB update is EUR 2.75. A 4K hour at up to 7 GB is nearly EUR 0.40. A 210 GB game file is EUR 11.55. VideoLAN’s own estimate is more than EUR 1 million a year, on a bit more than 18 million GB. The authors’ expected yield on 200 billion GB is EUR 10 billion. The same 200 billion GB times the statutory rate, before caps, is EUR 11 billion. None of those rows is Netflix’s, Google’s, Meta’s, Amazon’s, or Akamai’s tax bill. The amendment does not publish the gigabytes or French turnover of any named firm.

Firsty, citing Netflix’s help center, lists Low at 300 MB per hour, SD at 700 MB per hour, HD at 3 GB per hour, and 4K at 7 GB per hour. The Netflix help page is the page that table is drawn from. A 300 MB hour and a 7 GB hour are not the same product. Text and a low-bitrate stream sit near the first of those rates. A 4K hour sits at the last. Music was described by Mac4ever as almost spared, which fits a file that is megabytes per hour rather than gigabytes, though Spotify’s own data-usage page does not publish an hourly megabyte figure.

The cap, and who has cushion

Article 302 bis ZR caps the tax at the maximum of 15% of turnover achieved in France by the sender, or 2% of its total turnover. PPC Land’s reading of that sentence is one the drafting supports: the two thresholds are joined by “or,” and the text does not say whether the lower or the higher applies when they differ. A company with modest French sales and large global revenue faces two very different ceilings. Until a decree, a Senate rewrite, or a court picks one reading, an outsider cannot say which ceiling binds.

Power Up Gaming worked one reading with round numbers that match the 15% French limb. A company making EUR 1 million in France would pay no more than EUR 150,000, even if its data usage produced a EUR 200,000 calculation. That is the cap doing its job: volume math says EUR 200,000, the French-turnover ceiling says EUR 150,000, and the bill stops at EUR 150,000. The same article notes that a reinstall or patch can create more taxable traffic without a new sale. Installed size is not download size. A title that occupies 150 GB on a drive may transfer less.

The second table is one worked cap example, not a model of the industry. In the Power Up Gaming example, French revenue is EUR 1 million, uncapped volume math is EUR 200,000, and 15% of French revenue is EUR 150,000. Lhardit told the chamber that TF1, broadcasting five channels over the internet, would face a cost of EUR 200,000 to EUR 300,000 on his assessment, and he called that negligible. He did not state TF1’s French turnover, so the 15% ceiling for that case is not in the record. VideoLAN’s uncapped figure is more than EUR 1 million. Lhardit replied on X that the cap would mean the charge would not apply to the association. VideoLAN answered that 15% of receipts still removes 15% of a nonprofit budget, and that the text has no exemption for associations or free software. Frandroid noted that Wikimedia and daily Linux update mirrors, including Debian, could fall under the same definition of content provider. Those are readings of the text, not assessed bills.

Divide the statutory rate by 0.30 and the revenue required for the charge to equal 30% of revenue is EUR 0.183 per gigabyte. That figure is arithmetic from EUR 0.055, not a number in the amendment, and it is about 3.3 times the headline rate. A sender whose French revenue per gigabyte is far above EUR 0.183 can absorb the volume charge inside a 30% gross margin. A sender whose revenue per gigabyte is near zero cannot. The cap changes the question from “can this gigabyte pay for itself” to “does the annual ceiling cut the bill before volume math does.”

If the ceiling already binds, an extra gigabyte saved by compression does not reduce the tax. The bill is stuck at 15% of French turnover, or at 2% of worldwide turnover, depending on the reading. If the ceiling does not bind, each gigabyte avoided is worth EUR 0.055. The authors say the charge will push senders toward better compression because the network is, in their words, a pipe with no volume limit. That incentive exists only in the zone where the cap has not yet bitten. For a global group, 2% of worldwide turnover is a large euro number, so the French volume bill can sit inside the company without becoming a French P&L. A smaller international sender with heavy French traffic and thin French revenue does not have that cushion. Fifteen percent of a small French turnover caps the euro bill, which is why Lhardit told VideoLAN the cap would save it, and it also takes a large share of whatever French receipts exist, which is why VideoLAN called the reply a confusion of revenue and profit.

Minister David Amiel opposed the amendment on three grounds, as PPC Land translated the record. He said half of the tax, still EUR 5 billion on the authors’ proposal, would fall on smaller content providers, including French ones, rather than only on the largest platforms. Philippe Juvin, general rapporteur of the finance committee, gave an unfavorable opinion and warned that the largest platforms could pass the weight onto advertisers. Lhardit answered that he did not see how the charge could be passed to users of free services such as Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok. Pass-through to advertisers, and pass-through into a subscription price, are different pipes. A priced download can carry EUR 5.50 or EUR 11.55 as a line on a sale. A free stream, a free backup, a free-to-play install, and an open-source mirror have no sale to attach the same bytes to.

The next votes, and dated call

Le Figaro reported that the Assembly is due to vote on the finance bill as a whole on 17 November 2026. The government can ask for a second deliberation when more deputies are in the chamber. The same paper said the text must also pass the Senate, which has a right-wing majority, and that using article 49.3 to drop contested clauses is a path already backed by Assembly president Yael Braun-Pivet. Franceinfo’s budget tracker describes deputies and senators examining the state budget through the end of the year. No subscriber price has changed because of this vote. Gadget coverage that treats the amendment as approved policy is ahead of the statute.

What to watch is mechanical. First, whether the 17 November vote on the whole bill keeps Chapter XXI. Second, whether the government forces a second deliberation and the 11-10 margin disappears once more than 35 deputies vote. Third, whether the Senate strikes the chapter, rewrites “or” in the cap, or cuts the rate. Fourth, whether a decree ever defines how an access provider identifies the emitter, given that IANA allocates number blocks to regional registries rather than registering each content company. Fifth, whether any platform files a price change for France and cites this text. Until one of those happens, Netflix, Google, Meta, Amazon, and Akamai are examples in the justification, not line items in a tax assessment.

The EUR 0.055-per-gigabyte charge will not appear in the promulgated 2027 finance law by 31 December 2026, because the government opposed amendment I-1358, the finance committee rejected it before the floor, the public vote was 11 to 10 with 35 deputies taking part, and the Senate has a right-wing majority. A second deliberation with a fuller chamber can change that parliamentary count.

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Sources and References

Sources cited while researching and writing this article:

• Analyse du scrutin n°9336 – 17e législature – Assemblée nationale
• Budget : les députés votent en faveur d’une nouvelle taxe sur les données numériques, censée rapporter 10 milliards d’euros
• Per-gigabyte tax on Google and Netflix traffic wins French vote 11-10
• Rapport annuel | Arcep
• What France’s Proposed Internet Tax Could Mean for Game Companies – Power Up Gaming
• Taxe numérique à 0,055 euro le Go : 11,55 euros de plus sur GTA 6 …
• « Vous ne comprenez rien » : VLC chiffre à 1 million d’euros par an …
• Netflix data usage: 300 MB to 7 GB per hour | Firsty
• How to control how much data Netflix uses | Netflix Help Center