The House Ways and Means Committee convened a legislative hearing on June 9, 2026, to examine seven digital asset tax bills spanning stablecoin treatment, mining and staking income, wash-sale rules, de minimis exemptions, and a voluntary disclosure program. The bills — H.R. 9172 through H.R. 9178...
"America needs clear tax rules of the road to remain the crypto capital of the world." — Jason Smith, Chairman, House Ways and Means Committee
The House Ways and Means Committee convened a legislative hearing on June 9, 2026, to examine seven digital asset tax bills spanning stablecoin treatment, mining and staking income, wash-sale rules, de minimis exemptions, and a voluntary disclosure program. The bills — H.R. 9172 through H.R. 9178, plus two Democratic discussion drafts — represent the most comprehensive congressional attempt to date to bring the U.S. tax code into alignment with an asset class now held by 67 million Americans.
No markup was scheduled. The hearing served as a legislative discussion, meaning the path to law still requires committee markup, House floor passage, Senate action, and presidential signature. But the scope of the package, its bipartisan components, and its timing alongside pending market-structure and stablecoin legislation signal that Congress views tax clarity as a prerequisite for sustained institutional adoption.
The economic stakes are substantial. The IRS collected over $42 billion in crypto-related taxes in 2025, a 10% increase from 2024, according to IRS enforcement data. Crypto audits rose 52% year-over-year. Yet compliance remains uneven: only 67% of U.S. crypto investors reported digital asset income on IRS forms in 2025, and the newly mandated Form 1099-DA — effective for 2025 transactions — does not capture DeFi activity, non-custodial wallet transactions, or inter-exchange transfers.
Chairman Jason Smith (R-MO) framed the package as addressing "key gaps in the tax code," citing the administrative burden on everyday crypto users. His example: "31 percent of crypto owners would like to buy a cup of coffee at the local shop, yet each $5 cup of coffee bought with a digital asset generates two new pieces of tax paperwork."
The committee circulated six standalone bills and one bipartisan discussion draft, each targeting a distinct tax code deficiency:
| Bill | Sponsor | Focus | |------|---------|-------| | H.R. 9178 | Rep. Rudy Yakym (R-IN) | De minimis exclusions, stablecoin treatment, simplified accounting | | H.R. 9175 | Rep. Mike Carey (R-OH) | Mining and staking income classification, deferral election | | H.R. 9173 | Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA) | Charitable deduction reform for digital asset donations | | H.R. 9176 | Rep. David Kustoff (R-TN) | Securities lending safe harbor, mark-to-market accounting | | H.R. 9174 | Rep. Aaron Bean (R-FL) | One-time voluntary disclosure program | | H.R. 9172 | Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-TX) | Wash-sale and constructive-sale rule extension | | Discussion Draft | Rep. Steven Horsford (D-NV) | Five-year deferral cap, charitable deduction limits |
The modular approach — seven separate bills rather than an omnibus — allows lawmakers to build coalitions around individual provisions and advance non-controversial items independently.
Rep. Yakym's Less Tax Paperwork for Digital Asset Owners Act addresses one of the most commonly cited compliance frictions: the requirement to calculate and report gain or loss on every transaction involving a digital asset, including network gas fees of a few cents.
The bill establishes a $10 per-transaction de minimis exemption for network fees, capped at 5,000 transactions per taxpayer per year. Any gain or loss generated when a user spends digital assets to pay blockchain gas fees below this threshold would be excluded from gross income.
The bill also extends a gain/loss exclusion to regulated U.S. dollar stablecoins, eliminating tax paperwork on transactions where price fluctuations from the $1.00 peg are negligible. As Chairman Smith stated: "If Americans want to pay with a stablecoin instead of a credit card or cash, they should be able to without a pile of tax paperwork."
A third provision creates an optional simplified accounting election, allowing frequent digital asset users to provide one combined annual income calculation rather than tracking gain or loss on each individual transaction.
The stablecoin provision aligns with the broader GENIUS Act stablecoin framework pending in Congress. However, questions remain about whether the exclusion should apply only to GENIUS-compliant stablecoins or to all dollar-pegged digital assets. Alison Mangiero from the Crypto Council for Innovation advocated for "sensible tax treatment for GENIUS-compliant stablecoins that allows them to function as the payments instruments they are."
Rep. Carey's Tax Clarity for Mining and Staking Act targets what the industry considers the most economically significant ambiguity in current tax treatment. Under existing IRS guidance (Rev. Rul. 2023-14), mining and staking rewards are treated as ordinary income at the moment of receipt, valued at fair market value — even if the recipient has not sold the asset.
H.R. 9175 confirms this baseline: newly minted digital assets from mining or staking constitute ordinary income. But it introduces a critical election: taxpayers may choose to treat newly minted assets as "self-created property," deferring recognition until disposition. The bill also permits grantor trusts holding digital assets to receive staking rewards without jeopardizing their tax status, a provision relevant to institutional staking operations.
This is the most contentious provision in the package. Mike Kaercher, deputy director of the Tax Law Center at NYU Law, warned the committee that "despite some thoughtful guardrails in the bill, it may be possible for taxpayers to permanently escape tax by earning rewards through certain business structures." He argued the deferral election "violates parity with traditional finance and the principle that income is taxed on receipt."
Democratic members echoed this concern, questioning whether mining companies could structure operations to defer income indefinitely. The committee's Democrats view the deferral mechanism as a potential new tax shelter, not a compliance simplification.
The two anti-abuse bills represent the trade-off embedded in the package: relief on compliance in exchange for closing existing loopholes.
H.R. 9172, sponsored by Rep. Arrington, extends the longstanding wash-sale and constructive-sale rules to digital assets for the first time. Currently, crypto traders can sell an asset at a loss, immediately repurchase it, and claim the tax loss — a strategy prohibited for securities under the 30-day wash-sale window. The bill applies the same 30-day waiting period to digital assets.
H.R. 9176, the Providing Analogous Rules for Digital Assets (PAR) Act from Rep. Kustoff, moves in the opposite direction: it extends benefits currently available only to traditional financial instruments. These include safe harbors for foreign investment in U.S. digital asset markets, permitting digital asset lending without triggering taxable events, and allowing digital asset dealers and traders to elect mark-to-market accounting.
Together, the two bills aim for a parity framework: digital assets should be treated neither better nor worse than comparable traditional instruments.
H.R. 9173 removes the qualified appraisal requirement for charitable donations of digital assets when the donation value can be determined through reliable, publicly available market data. The current requirement — hiring an independent appraiser for each donation — adds cost and friction that discourages crypto philanthropy.
H.R. 9174 establishes a one-time voluntary disclosure program for taxpayers with unresolved crypto tax obligations, offering reduced penalties for those who come forward. With IRS enforcement actions increasing — Operation Hidden Treasure has resulted in over 1,200 investigations and recovered more than $400 million in crypto taxes since 2023 — the disclosure program provides a carrot alongside the enforcement stick.
Democrats submitted two discussion drafts signaling they view the Republican package as incomplete.
The End Digital Assets Tax Shelter Act targets what the drafters describe as a Puerto Rico source-income loophole, where crypto holders relocate to U.S. territories to avoid federal capital gains taxes on digital assets.
Rep. Horsford's amendment to H.R. 9175 imposes a five-year cap on the mining and staking deferral election, after which assets would be taxed as ordinary income at fair market value regardless of disposition. This directly addresses NYU's Kaercher's concern about indefinite deferral. The amendment also limits charitable deductions for non-widely-traded digital assets to the amount the charity actually receives upon sale, rather than appraised value at time of donation.
Ranking Member Richard Neal (D-MA) signaled conditional support: "I'm aligned with that goal — eventually. There's healthy skepticism on both sides."
The hearing featured testimony from representatives of Coinbase, Fidelity Investments, and the Coin Center, alongside academic witnesses.
Lawrence Zlatkin, Coinbase VP of Tax, provided the most detailed industry perspective: "Millions of Americans own or use digital assets, yet much of the tax code still treats this technology as though it were a niche experiment rather than a growing part of the financial system. The result has been confusion for taxpayers, compliance challenges for businesses, and unnecessary burdens for the IRS."
Zlatkin argued that market structure and tax policy must advance in parallel, not sequentially. He noted that requiring users to track gains and losses on transactions involving dollar-pegged stablecoins creates administrative burdens "while generating limited tax revenue." On the de minimis provision, Zlatkin urged lawmakers to recognize that "treating every fee as a reportable transaction adds significant complexity while generating limited tax revenue."
The academic counterweight came from Kaercher, whose testimony focused on the revenue implications and abuse potential of the deferral election — positions that found traction with committee Democrats.
The June 9 hearing was a discussion hearing, not a markup. No votes occurred, and no legislation advanced. The committee must still schedule a markup session, reconcile Republican and Democratic positions on the deferral election, and coordinate with the Senate Finance Committee's own crypto tax efforts — including prior testimony from Coinbase's Zlatkin before the Senate in October 2025.
Timing pressure is real. The GENIUS Act stablecoin legislation and the CLARITY Act market-structure bill are both further along in the legislative pipeline. Tax provisions must be reconciled with these frameworks, particularly on stablecoin definitions and treatment. The broader question — whether major crypto tax legislation can pass before the end of the current Congressional session — remains open.
The modular bill approach may prove strategically sound. Non-controversial provisions like the charitable donation reform and voluntary disclosure program could advance independently, while the staking deferral and wash-sale provisions undergo further negotiation.
The seven-bill package represents the first comprehensive attempt to align U.S. digital asset taxation with the economic reality of a market held by roughly one in four Americans. The core tension — between relief that encourages compliance and provisions that could enable avoidance — was visible throughout the hearing and will define the markup process.
Chairman Smith framed the stakes in competitive terms: "The United States is the digital asset capital of the world today, but other countries who have instituted clear, comprehensive tax policy could one day claim that title." Whether Congress moves quickly enough to address the compliance gap while closing the enforcement gap remains the central legislative question of the current session.