Watching YouTube, watching Netflix or downloading games all consume Internet data. France is considering taxing this amount of data. Platforms will have to pay, but users could bear part of the cost if the service increases in price.

Watching one more YouTube video can also result in additional taxes. That's what could happen to the video delivery platform if a proposal recently passed by the French House of Representatives becomes law.

On October 30, during the 2027 budget review process, French parliamentarians passed an amendment proposing to collect 0.055 euros per GB of data sent to users in France.

Simply put, every time you watch a video, data is transmitted from the platform's system to your phone or computer. The more you watch, the greater the amount of data transmitted. According to the proposed calculation, as the amount of data increases, the supplier's tax also increases.

For example, transferring 100 GB of data would correspond to 5.5 euros in tax, before the cap is applied. But this is a calculation for businesses, not just seeing 100 GB and users immediately receiving a tax bill.

Services such as YouTube, Netflix or game download platforms may be affected. It can be understood here that if users download more data from these platforms, the platform itself will have to pay more taxes to the state.

The proposed group expects to collect about 10 billion euros per year.

So will viewers lose more money?

Not sure, but possible. Businesses can bear the costs themselves or increase service prices to compensate. At that time, taxes are levied on the platform but user wallets can still be thin. There is currently no basis to say whether YouTube will collect money for each video or how much each person will have to pay.

This proposal is not yet in effect. It could still be fixed or eliminated during the budget passage process.