French Lawmakers Back Per-Gigabyte Tax on Internet Traffic

A proposal to tax France-bound internet traffic by data volume has cleared its first significant hurdle. According to the National Assembly record, an amendment was adopted on October 30 by a razor-thin 11 to 10 vote and added to the country's next budget bill, despite strong objections from the government side and the finance committee's rapporteur.

The amendment, tabled by Socialist lawmaker Laurent Lhardit, would require content providers to pay roughly 0.055 euros (about 0.06 dollars) for every gigabyte they deliver to French users. Its backers say the levy could raise around 10 billion euros, or roughly 11.2 billion dollars, a year.

A tax on traffic, not on revenue

What sets the proposal apart is its tax base. Rather than advertising income, profit or subscription fees, it targets the internet traffic companies generate. The explanatory text names Google, Meta, Netflix, Amazon and the content delivery network provider Akamai as the main likely taxpayers, and notes that platforms such as TikTok could fall within scope depending on how the rules are applied.

Alongside the 0.055-euro-per-gigabyte rate, the amendment sets a ceiling: 15 percent of a company's French revenue or 2 percent of its worldwide revenue. It also takes into account content delivery networks, which cache copies of content on servers closer to users to cut load times and ease network congestion. According to the figures cited, about 200 billion GB of data passes through French internet service providers each year, and the five companies named in the text are responsible for roughly half of that traffic.

Who would measure and collect it

If the amendment becomes law, internet service providers such as Orange, Free and Iliad would take on a key role. They would have to measure data volumes and work out which companies are generating the traffic. The data would be passed to the French tax authority every three months, with the process overseen by the telecoms regulator Arcep.

This is where the objections concentrate. Government representative David Amiel questioned whether attributing traffic to content providers would demand complex monitoring requirements. Opponents in the chamber argue that the scheme could endanger user privacy, and the concerns reportedly extend to the possible impact on French businesses.

Disputed points and what comes next

According to Lhardit, the rapporteur argues the tax would be passed on to consumers. Lhardit counters that Facebook, Instagram and TikTok are free services and says he struggles to see how the cost could be shifted onto users. On the cost to French businesses, he pointed to the broadcaster TF1 as an example, saying the expected contribution from broadcasters would be between 200,000 and 300,000 euros, a relatively modest sum.

Several European countries already levy digital services taxes based on revenue from advertising, marketplaces and other digital activity. In March, Meta announced that from July 1, 2026 it would charge advertisers location-based fees to offset digital services taxes and similar public charges in countries including France, Italy and Spain. European measures aimed at big tech have at times strained relations with Washington: Apple and Meta were fined 500 million and 200 million euros respectively last year, and the US described those penalties as a new form of economic tribute and said it would not tolerate them.

The amendment is not yet law. It still has to clear later stages of the French budget process, and Parliament is expected to vote on the first part of the budget in early November.