Forty swaps, no tax, and 305 € that change everything

One holder made forty swaps between crypto-assets during the year. They have no gain to declare. Their neighbour sold once, for 310 €, and must declare the whole of their gain. Before you read on: what separates those two situations?

The exchange against legal tender, and nothing else

The regime of article 150 VH bis of the French tax code covers gains made by individuals resident in France for tax purposes on the disposal for consideration of digital assets.

The decisive point sits in one sentence of that article's part II: swaps without cash consideration between digital assets are not taxable in the year of the swap. They are called intercalary transactions.

An intercalary transaction triggers nothing. Converting one digital asset into another, forty times over, produces no taxable event: the tax waits for the exit into legal tender, or the purchase of a good or a service.

A swap WITH cash consideration is the exception. The consideration received in currency is a disposal for consideration and enters the scope, up to that amount.

Paying for a good or a service in digital assets is likewise a disposal for consideration. Buying a car in bitcoin is not a neutral conversion: it is an exit from the portfolio, taxable on the same footing as a sale against euros.

That is what makes the boundary practical rather than theoretical. The taxable event is the moment value leaves the digital asset world, in whatever direction, and a purchase settled in crypto crosses that line just as a bank transfer does.

Occasional, professional, mining: three distinct regimes

The regime described here covers disposals made on an OCCASIONAL basis, in the management of private wealth. That is the most frequent qualification, but it is not the only possible one.

A buying and selling activity carried on habitually falls under industrial and commercial profits, with entirely different rules of base, of social contributions and of accounting obligations.

Mining is a third case, attached to non-commercial profits. Three regimes therefore coexist, and the qualification is drawn from the conditions in which the transactions are carried out, not from volume alone.

The border is not a quantitative one. No text sets a number of disposals beyond which the activity would become professional: it is a body of indicators that traces it, bearing on the means committed, the tools used and the share those transactions take in the person's income.

The stakes are considerable. Moving to industrial and commercial profits loses the flat rate, opens social contributions and imposes accounts, without the taxpayer having changed anything in their trading habits.

305 €, a cliff and not an allowance

Part II B of article 150 VH bis exempts persons whose total disposal prices for the year do not exceed 305 €, swaps without cash consideration being excluded from that total.

The threshold bears on the total of DISPOSAL PRICES, not on the total of gains. A taxpayer selling 400 € of assets bought for 390 € crosses the threshold, although their gain is 10 €.

And crossing it tips everything over. Once 305 € is exceeded, every disposal of the year becomes taxable: there is no per-transaction threshold, and no exempt fraction below the amount.

The total is also counted over the whole tax year, without distinguishing intermediaries. A holder spread across five platforms adds up the five statements before concluding: it is the year's total of disposal prices that meets the threshold, not each account's.