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France's per-gigabyte tax: what the MPs' vote means for streaming and piracy

6 min read

Illustration for the article: France's per-gigabyte tax: what the MPs' vote means for streaming and piracy

On Friday, October 30, 2026, France’s National Assembly adopted, at first reading of the 2027 budget, a tax of 5.5 euro cents per gigabyte of data sent to French internet users. The amendment, tabled by Socialist MP Laurent Lhardit, passed by the narrowest of margins: 11 votes to 10, with 35 MPs voting, against the advice of the government and of the budget’s general rapporteur. It had first been rejected in the finance committee.

The measure targets the largest sources of traffic: streaming platforms, social networks and cloud services. It therefore goes straight to the economics of online video, the content our clients pay to produce and pirates divert.

What the amendment provides

According to reports in the French press (the full text of the amendment was not yet readable online at the time of writing):

  • Who pays: the company the data comes from, whether a streaming platform, a social network, a cloud service or a content distributor. Individuals would not be liable, and neither would internet service providers (Orange, Free, SFR, Bouygues).
  • How much: €0.055 per gigabyte. An HD film of a few gigabytes would cost the platform sending it a few cents; a 200 GB video game, about €11.
  • Cap: the contribution could not exceed 15% of revenue earned in France, or 2% of the company’s worldwide revenue. The press does not say which of the two caps would apply.
  • Expected yield: up to €10 billion a year, based on about 200 billion gigabytes received each year by French subscribers. This is its authors’ estimate, not guaranteed revenue.
  • Concentration: according to Arcep figures cited by Europe 1, Netflix, Google, Meta, Amazon and Akamai alone account for about half of the data received by subscribers in France.

How traffic would be measured

Internet service providers would count the volumes received by their subscribers, then send consolidated, anonymized reports to the tax authorities, under the supervision of Arcep (the telecom regulator) and the DGFiP (the tax administration). They could neither examine the content of communications nor record individual destinations. For content delivery networks (CDNs, which deliver much of the world’s video), the volume would be the traffic leaving those networks. The details are left to a decree.

This is where the government questioned whether the mechanism is workable. The Minister for Public Action and Accounts, David Amiel, also warned that a significant share of the burden could fall on smaller players, including French ones. The general rapporteur raised the risk that the big platforms would pass the cost on to their advertisers.

Nothing is settled yet

An amendment adopted at first reading is not law. The budget still has to go through the Senate, and the provision can be amended or removed as the bill moves between the two chambers. If the government uses Article 49.3 to push the budget through, it can also keep a version that leaves this amendment out. Given the government’s opposition and the margin of the vote, the tax is far from a done deal.

Our take: the effect on piracy

None of the articles we read addresses this side of the issue. Yet it is the one that concerns us directly.

Pirates would not pay. A tax is collected from identified companies that report their revenue. Illegal streaming sites and pirate IPTV services operate from abroad, under assumed names, behind intermediaries that hide their real host. They report nothing today; they would not report their gigabytes tomorrow.

The price gap could widen. The press is divided on subscription increases: the amendment provides for no automatic pass-through, but one remains possible. If it happens, legal services would cost a little more, while pirate services, which pay neither rights nor taxes, would stay at the same price. That kind of gap is a ready-made sales pitch for resellers of illegal subscriptions.

Intermediaries would be on the front line. If CDN volumes are counted as they leave the network, it is those networks, not the sites they serve, that would see the bill for pirate traffic. Indirectly, that could push some intermediaries to know their customers better. This is a hypothesis: everything will depend on the decree.

In short, a volume tax makes what is declared more expensive and leaves what is not untouched. It does not replace site blocking, link takedowns or prosecution of organized networks.

And elsewhere?

  • In Europe, the debate over the “fair share” that big platforms should pay telecom operators keeps coming back. The European Commission’s proposed Digital Networks Act, published in January 2026, dropped these network fees, but amendments in the European Parliament are reopening the question.
  • In Canada, the debate is about revenue, not volume. The CRTC had required streaming services to make a base contribution of 5% of their Canadian revenue to fund Canadian content; challenged before the Federal Court of Appeal, it was stayed. In July 2026, Ottawa told the court it intends to scrap it and replace it with public funding.

Volume tax, revenue contribution or network fee: in every case, legal services fund creation, and piracy benefits without contributing. We will follow the debate as it moves to the Senate.

Sources

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