France Wants a 5.5-Cent-per-Gigabyte Tax on Netflix, Google and Meta
France just voted to bill Netflix, Google, and Meta by the gigabyte, and the revenue estimate runs into the billions. Whether it survives the Senate and a potential White House response is another matter entirely.
On Friday, October 30, 2026, France’s National Assembly adopted amendment I-1358 to the 2027 finance bill. The amendment creates a tax of €0.055, or 5.5 euro cents (about 6.1 U.S. cents), on every gigabyte that content providers send to subscribers of French internet providers. It passed 11 to 10, with only 35 of the Assembly’s 577 deputies taking part.
Socialist deputy Laurent Lhardit’s amendment carried over the objections of the government and the budget’s general rapporteur. Socialist, LFI, Ecologist, and GDR deputies voted yes, and the finance committee had already turned down the same idea earlier in October.
Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX | NFLX Price Prediction) closed at $62.08, up 0.05%. Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG, NASDAQ:GOOGL) fell 1.4% to $279.84, and Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) slipped 1.53% to $614.99. None of those moves link to the vote.
What Amendment I-1358 Actually Does
The tax falls on the companies sending the data. Internet providers only measure the amounts under the telecom regulator Arcep and the tax administration, and traffic routed through content delivery networks is counted as it leaves those networks.
Each company’s bill is capped at 15% of its French revenue or 2% of its worldwide revenue, with no separate size threshold. Detailed rules would be set later by decree.
The explanatory statement says Google, Meta, Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Netflix and Akamai (NASDAQ:AKAM) carry half the traffic Arcep measures, out of 200 billion gigabytes a year. It adds: “Au taux de 0,055 € par giga, un rendement de 10 Md€ est attendu.” That yield of about $11.2 billion is Lhardit’s own estimate, and the administration has yet to assess it. The companies appear only in that statement, because the tax itself applies to any content provider.
Who Would Actually Feel the Bill
Netflix sells only video, so its traffic is heavy relative to its revenue, and the French revenue cap would likely set its bill. EMEA brought in $4.11 billion of Netflix’s third-quarter revenue, which makes Europe material even though France is only one market within it.
Alphabet carries YouTube, but search ads produce most of its revenue and very little traffic. Against third-quarter revenue of $127.58 billion, any French bill would be small. Meta carries video across its apps, and general rapporteur Philippe Juvin warned that the big platforms could pass the cost on to advertisers.
Public Accounts Minister David Amiel wondered whether the tax would work at all. He estimated that about half the yield could fall on smaller content providers, including French ones.
Why This Amendment May Not Survive
A one-vote margin in a nearly empty chamber carries little weight. The Senate still has to take up the bill, and the government can force a budget through without a vote under Article 49, paragraph 3, which could produce a final text that drops this amendment.
Paris needs the money, though. Fitch confirmed France at A+ but cut its outlook to negative, saying “deteriorating fiscal conditions and political fragmentation are undermining debt stabilization prospects.” It puts debt at 115.7% of GDP in 2025, rising to about 124% by 2028.
Washington is also a risk for France. On June 15, President Trump threatened a tariff on French wine and Champagne unless France drops its 3% digital services tax, which applies to companies with more than €25 million in French revenue and €750 million worldwide. On June 26, he posted that “any Country that imposes such a Tax will immediately be met with a 100% TARIFF.” No U.S. response to this vote has emerged.
Are Big Tech Stocks a Buy?
The bull case is that this amendment is still far from becoming law and the caps limit the damage even if it passes. Netflix grew third-quarter revenue 11.8% with a 34.6% operating margin, while Google Cloud grew 103%.
The bear case is that Europe keeps reaching for new ways to tax U.S. platforms. Netflix is down 33.79% year to date, and Alphabet’s EPS of $2.12 missed the $2.97 consensus.
My view is that the vote leaves the case for the group intact. Of the three, Netflix carries the most exposure to a traffic tax. Alphabet, valued at $3.47 trillion, has the least. The test comes when the Senate’s version of the finance bill is published: if amendment I-1358 is still in it, or in any text the government forces through under Article 49.3, the risk to Netflix becomes real.
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Omor Ibne Ehsan is a writer at 24/7 Wall St. He is a self-taught investor with a focus on growth, cyclical, and dividend equities that have strong fundamentals, value, and long-term potential. He also has an interest in high-risk, high-reward investments such as penny stocks.
