The French National Assembly has approved an amendment to the 2027 budget bill introducing a levy on internet traffic. The measure passed with a narrow margin of 11 votes to 10. Under the proposal, content and digital service providers, including Netflix, Google, Amazon, and Akamai, will be subject to a fee of €0.055 per gigabyte of data delivered to users in France.
The legislation sets caps on the total liability for companies. The maximum payment is limited to either 15% of a firm's revenue in France or 2% of its global revenue, whichever is higher. This structure ensures that the final tax amount is not solely determined by the volume of data transmitted. The regulation does not prohibit companies from passing these costs on to consumers.
The tax applies to various forms of data transmission, including game downloads, updates, and streaming services. For example, a 4K video stream on Netflix generates approximately 7 GB of traffic per hour. While the amendment has cleared a legislative hurdle, it has not yet been enacted into law and must undergo further approval stages before it can take effect.
