Bitcoin mining and tax in France: what to declare, and is it legal?

Yes. For the French tax office, what mining earns falls under non-commercial profits (BNC, for bénéfices non commerciaux): profits from mining or staking “are taxed as non-commercial profits (BNC)”, says impots.gouv.fr. The rule comes from a Conseil d’État decision of 26 April 2018: bitcoin gains that are the counterpart of the taxpayer’s participation in creating or running the system fall under BNC, not under the capital gains regime for individuals. The administration reads it as confirming BNC for “mining”.

Its official doctrine, the BOFiP, adds that the mining result is calculated under the ordinary rules for non-commercial profits. The same goes for Bitcoin Cash or any other mined coin (Bitcoin Cash solo mining). And unlike crypto sales, which are exempt when the year’s total does not exceed €305, mining receipts are declared from the first euro: the allowance, further down, may then wipe them out.

I am neither a lawyer nor an accountant. These are French rules, for a household tax resident in France, as they read on 28 October 2026.

The most common case: you mine in a regular pool A server that machines connect to. A regular pool shares the earnings, a solo pool does not. Solo or pool?, which pays you small amounts, often every day or once a threshold is reached. The ordinary BNC rules, the ones the BOFiP refers to, say two things (BOFiP, receipts):

• a payment received in goods or securities is a receipt equal to their value on the day ownership passes;
• a sum is deemed received on the date the recipient can freely dispose of it.

Applied to mining, this gives: each payout is a receipt, at its euro value on the day it reaches your wallet. If your pool keeps a balance you can withdraw whenever you like, the date that counts may be the day that balance is credited to you. To be frank: no article of the French tax code deals with mining as such. The general BNC rule applies, and a 2023 amendment that wanted to write “as soon as they are received” into the law is not in it today.

Hence the golden rule: keep a ledger from the very first payout. Even under micro-BNC, the tax code requires a document giving the day-by-day detail of your receipts, in no set form (article 102 ter, BOFiP). A spreadsheet will do, one line per payout:

• the date, the time and the pool that paid;
• the amount in sats and the transaction ID (txid), which you can check on an explorer such as mempool.space;
• the bitcoin price in euros at that moment, and where it comes from, always the same source;
• the resulting euro value: that is your receipt.

Keep your machine and electricity invoices too. And if you rent out your machine on MiningRigRentals, log those payments in the same ledger: this is not mining in the strict sense, and the texts cited here do not say which category they belong to. Ask a professional.

These receipts are declared under one of two regimes:

Micro-BNC applies automatically as long as your receipts of the previous year or the year before do not exceed €83,600: that is the ceiling for 2026 to 2028 (€77,700 for 2023 to 2025, BOFiP). It only stops after two years in a row above the ceiling, and it also applies in the year you start (BOFiP).

Real expenses are an option: you take it by filing form 2035 on time; it lasts one year and renews tacitly (BOFiP). It lets you deduct the expenses required to carry out the activity, such as your machines’ share An attempt good enough to be counted by the pool. It proves your machine is working, even if it is not enough to find a block. of the electricity if you can back it up, with a wall-meter reading for example. But for a home miner the activity is usually non-professional (the BOFiP sees a marked imbalance between receipts and expenses as a sign of that), and then a loss cannot be deducted from your other income: it can only be set against profits of the same kind, the same year or the six following years (BOFiP).

Estimate as of 17 October 2026: average payouts from a regular pool, before its fee, at that day’s price and difficulty How many attempts it takes on average to find a block. It adjusts itself about every two weeks. Difficulty explained. Micro-BNC allowance: 34%, at least €305 or the amount of the receipts if lower. Electricity at €0.20 per kWh, day and night.

Machine, in a regular pool	Payouts a year	Micro-BNC allowance	Taxable amount	Electricity a year
Bitaxe Gamma (1.2 TH/s, 15 to 18 W rated)	€14	€14	€0	€32
Thor P2 (10 TH/s, 153 W measured at the wall)	€119	€119	€0	€268
About 50 TH/s and 550 W, roughly my shelf	€594	€305	€289	€964
Antminer S21 (200 TH/s, 3,500 W rated)	€2,375	€808	€1,567	€6,132

At household electricity prices, all these machines cost more than they earn on average. Under micro-BNC, the biggest one would still be taxed on about €1,570 a year, while under real expenses its result could be a loss, at the cost of real bookkeeping. For a Bitaxe, the question does not arise: the allowance covers everything. The full math on earnings and costs: is Bitcoin mining profitable?

Under micro-BNC there is no separate business return: everything goes on the supplementary return no. 2042-C-PRO, in the section for non-professional non-commercial income. On the 2026 return (2025 income), according to the official brochure:

Box 5HY is for social charges: 18.6% on this income (CSG 10.6%, CRDS 0.5%, solidarity levy 7.5%). The income after the allowance is also added to your household’s other income, at the progressive income tax rates. For the second person in the household the boxes change (5LU and 5IY). Box numbers can move from one year to the next: check them in that year’s brochure.

Solo, the calendar is quite different: as long as your machine finds no block, you receive nothing, so you have no mining receipts to declare. That is how it works on FindMyBlock, the solo pool I built (0% fee): the reward goes straight to your address on the day of the block, and nothing before. With a Bitaxe Gamma, the odds are about 1 in 16,000 per year (network as of 17 October 2026, see the solo mining calculator); the choice between the two is explained in Solo or pool: which one?

When it happens, it is a single, huge receipt: about €220,000 at the current price. Micro-BNC still applies that year if your receipts in the two previous years were under the ceiling, and the 34% allowance applies to the whole amount (BOFiP): about €145,000 is left to add to your income, at the progressive rates, plus social charges. Also ask your adviser whether the quotient system for exceptional income (article 163-0 A of the tax code) can apply to you.

Everything else, from the 100-block wait to the file for the exchange, is in Found a block solo: what happens next, all the way to taxes. One more point here: block rewards can only be spent after 100 blocks, about 16 hours 40 minutes. Note their value at the time of the block and at that moment, and have a professional settle which date to use.

For bitcoin you bought, the rule is clear: occasional sales by an individual fall under article 150 VH bis of the tax code (impots.gouv.fr, BOFiP).

• The gain is taxed at the flat tax (PFU) of 31.4% (12.8% income tax and 18.6% social charges), or at the progressive rates if you tick box 3CN, a final option that covers all the household’s crypto gains for the year.
• It is calculated on your whole portfolio, on form 2086: sale price, minus the total acquisition cost multiplied by the sale price and divided by the total value of the portfolio. The result goes in box 3AN, or in box 3BN for a loss.
• If the total of your sales for the year, for the whole household, does not exceed €305, the gains are exempt; form 2086 must still be attached.
• Swapping one crypto for another with no cash adjustment is not taxed at that point (the tax is deferred); paying for goods or a service in bitcoin is: it counts as a sale.

For bitcoin you mined, it is far less clear, and I would rather tell you. Here is what the official texts say:

• the notes to form 2086 define the acquisition cost as the prices paid in euros, plus the value of goods or services given in exchange; they say nothing about coins obtained by mining;
• the BOFiP on crypto sales recalls that BNC applies “by exception” to gains that are the counterpart of mining;
• the BOFiP on mining states that the acquisition value used to calculate the taxable result is zero when the digital assets were allocated free of charge.

None of these texts says whether the value already taxed on receipt becomes your acquisition cost, or whether selling mined coins then falls under the individual regime or under BNC. Before selling mined bitcoin for a sum that matters, have the calculation checked by a tax lawyer or an accountant, or ask the administration for a formal position: this is the rescrit (article L. 80 B of the tax procedure code), and only an explicit answer binds it. Your payout ledger will be useful either way.

Yes, if you have an account with an exchange based abroad: declare it every year with your tax return, by ticking box 8UU and attaching form 3916-3916-bis, for each account opened, held, used or closed during the year (article 1649 bis C of the tax code), even if you barely used it.

Forgetting is expensive: €750 per undeclared account, or €125 per omission or inaccuracy, up to €10,000 per return; €1,500 and €250 if the value of these accounts went above €50,000 at any point in the year (BOFiP).

The rule targets accounts with an organisation based abroad, anyone who habitually receives such assets on deposit, as the official brochure puts it. A wallet whose keys only you hold is kept by no organisation (which wallet to choose). The question does arise for an account on a foreign pool that holds your earnings before paying them out: if in doubt, ask your tax office.

Yes. No French law bans mining bitcoin at home, and the tax office treats mining as a taxable activity like any other, as seen above. I have been mining at home since 2017: 13 machines on a shelf, 500 to 600 W day and night, about €70 of electricity a month on my EDF Tempo plan. The real limits are those of any appliance that runs non-stop in a home.

• Noise. You may not disturb other people’s peace, by day or by night, service-public.fr reminds us (article R1336-5 of the public health code). Household appliances and heat pumps are listed among possible sources, and a noise is judged by its intensity but also by its duration and repetition: a fan blowing day and night can become a nuisance even if it is not loud. After a complaint, the fine can reach €450 (a €68 fixed penalty if paid within 45 days). For comparison, the Thor X1 is rated at 34 dB in normal mode and 51 dB overclocked.
• Your lease. As a tenant, you must use the premises peacefully and according to the purpose set in the lease, and not alter the premises or fittings without the landlord’s written consent (article 7 of the law of 6 July 1989): no new electrical circuit without their agreement.
• Co-ownership. Each co-owner uses their unit freely, provided they harm neither the other co-owners’ rights nor the purpose of the building (article 9 of the law of 10 July 1965). The co-ownership rules set that purpose: reread them before installing a noisy machine.
• Electrical safety. State services advise against overloading sockets, especially with high-consumption appliances (Ardèche prefecture). A Bitaxe Gamma draws 15 to 18 W (rated), a Thor P2 153 W (measured at the wall), an Antminer S21 about 3,500 W (rated): for a machine that size, have the circuit checked by an electrician.
• Subscribed power. With a Linky meter, the power cuts out when the subscribed power is exceeded, with a 30% tolerance; common subscriptions range from 3 to 15 kVA, and Linky lets you pick your power in 1 kVA steps (2020 ministerial answer). A 3,500 W machine alone takes more than half of a 6 kVA subscription, day and night.

Each machine’s power draw and its cost are covered in Bitcoin miner power consumption.

1. Open your ledger at the first payout: date, amount in sats, txid, euro price, value.
2. Every spring, declare the year’s total receipts on form 2042-C-PRO, and the amount after the allowance for social charges.
3. With a foreign account, tick box 8UU and attach form 3916-3916-bis.
4. Keep machine and electricity invoices, useful under real expenses and to prove where your funds come from.
5. Before selling mined bitcoin for a large sum, have the method checked by a professional, or ask for a rescrit.
6. Before adding a machine, check your lease or co-ownership rules, the noise and your electrical installation.

French rules read in the official texts (BOFiP, impots.gouv.fr, Légifrance, Conseil d’État decision of 26 April 2018) and checked on 28 October 2026. This is not tax or legal advice: your situation can change the answer, and the texts change too. Earnings and odds follow the network as of 17 October 2026.

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