France Votes 5.5-Cent Gigabyte Tax, Tech Firms Warn of Heavy Costs

France's National Assembly voted 11 to 10 on Friday to adopt a Socialist amendment to the 2027 budget imposing a tax of 5.5 euro cents per gigabyte of data sent to internet users in France. The measure, led by lawmaker Laurent Lhardit, is expected to raise 10 billion euros annually.

The tax would apply to companies that produce or send data to French internet users, including content and service providers. Internet providers such as Orange, SFR, Bouygues Telecom and Free would record data volumes and identify senders, forwarding anonymized figures to the tax authority each quarter under Arcep's oversight.

“So, the French socialists, and Parliament members just voted a tax, that they don't understand, which would cost VideoLAN more than 1 million euro per year.”

Arcep estimates that 200 billion gigabytes flow to French internet customers each year, with half coming from just five companies: Google, Meta, Amazon, Netflix and Akamai. The tax is capped at 15 percent of a sender's revenue in France or 2 percent of its global revenue.

VideoLAN, the nonprofit behind the VLC media player, warned the tax would cost it more than 1 million euros per year. The group said lawmakers do not understand the levy and questioned their claim to want technological sovereignty.

OVHcloud founder Octave Klaba estimated the tax could cost his company up to 70 million euros annually. He argued that on a 100-gigabit-per-second port, the levy would reach 1.02 million euros per month, far exceeding the cost of the connection itself.

The amendment states that only data quantity is measured and content remains untouched. The low number of lawmakers present during the vote drew attention to the late-night session.