Seven tax bills covering digital asset treatment cleared the House Ways and Means Committee hearing stage on June 9, 2026 — the first time the leadership of a congressional taxwriting committee has sponsored its own cryptocurrency tax proposals. The bills address de minimis transaction exemptions...
"The digital asset status quo is untenable. America needs clear tax rules of the road to remain the crypto capital of the world." — Jason Smith, Chairman, House Ways and Means Committee
Seven tax bills covering digital asset treatment cleared the House Ways and Means Committee hearing stage on June 9, 2026 — the first time the leadership of a congressional taxwriting committee has sponsored its own cryptocurrency tax proposals. The bills address de minimis transaction exemptions, mining and staking reward deferral, stablecoin gain/loss exclusion, wash sale rule application, charitable donation parity, lending tax neutrality, and a voluntary disclosure program for prior noncompliance.
The Senate Finance Committee, led by Chair Mike Crapo (R-ID) and Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-OR), has signaled a parallel framework described as "more similar than not" to the House package. Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) told Bloomberg Tax the committee could hold a markup as early as fall 2026. The bipartisan Miller-Horsford PARITY Act, which the House passed in March 2026, provides additional legislative scaffolding. EY Americas Crypto and Digital Asset Tax Leader Tom Shea has noted that the tax bills can advance independently from the stalled CLARITY Act market-structure legislation.
The timing is not coincidental. The IRS began requiring Form 1099-DA filings for digital asset transactions effective January 1, 2025 — covering gross proceeds — with cost-basis reporting phasing in for 2026 transactions. An estimated 67 million American crypto holders now face a reporting regime designed for traditional brokerage accounts applied to an asset class where cost-basis tracking remains operationally difficult. The legislative push attempts to resolve the gap between enforcement infrastructure already in place and substantive tax rules that have not been updated since 2014.
Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith circulated seven discussion-draft bills on June 4, 2026, with a full committee legislative hearing on June 9. The bills, their sponsors, and their core provisions:
H.R. 9178 — Less Tax Paperwork for Digital Asset Owners Act (Rep. Rudy Yakym, R-IN). Excludes gain or loss on digital assets used to pay network fees (gas fees) up to $10 per transaction, capped at 5,000 transactions per taxpayer per year. Separately excludes gain or loss on regulated U.S. dollar stablecoins and creates an election for a simplified accounting method for digital asset portfolios.
H.R. 9175 — Tax Clarity for Mining and Staking Act (Rep. Mike Carey, R-OH). Allows taxpayers to elect deferral of tax on newly created digital assets from mining or staking until sale or disposition. Provides rules for character and source of validation rewards. Permits grantor trusts to stake digital assets without violating grantor trust rules.
H.R. 9173 — Charitable Deductions for Digital Asset Donations Act (Rep. Mike Kelly, R-PA). Exempts digital asset donations from qualified appraisal requirements when market prices are determinable from reliable exchanges, establishing parity with publicly traded securities.
H.R. 9176 — Providing Analogous Rules for Digital Assets Act (PAR Act) (Rep. David Kustoff, R-TN). Extends safe harbors for foreign investment in digital asset markets. Classifies digital asset lending as non-taxable events under expanded IRC § 1058. Permits mark-to-market accounting elections under IRC § 475 for dealers and traders.
H.R. 9174 — Digital Assets Voluntary Disclosure Program Act (Rep. Aaron Bean, R-FL). Creates a one-time voluntary disclosure program for taxpayers with prior digital asset noncompliance, offering reduced penalties.
H.R. 9172 — Applying Existing Tax Anti-Abuse Rules to Digital Assets Act (Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-TX). Extends wash sale rules under IRC § 1091 and constructive sale rules under IRC § 1259 to digital assets, closing the current loophole that allows crypto investors to sell at a loss and immediately repurchase while still claiming the deduction.
A seventh discussion draft, the Digital Asset PARITY Act (Reps. Steven Horsford, D-NV, and Max Miller, R-OH), addresses de minimis transactions and wash sales in a bipartisan package. The House passed its earlier iteration in March 2026.
Current IRS rules require taxpayers to calculate and report gain or loss on every digital asset transaction, regardless of size. Purchasing coffee with Bitcoin at $0.50 in gas fees technically requires cost-basis tracking and capital gains computation.
The House and Senate proposals diverge on thresholds:
| Provision | House (H.R. 9178) | Senate (Lummis Bill) | |---|---|---| | De minimis per-transaction | $10 (gas fees only) | $300 (broad) | | Annual cap | 5,000 transactions | $5,000 | | Scope | Network fees only | All crypto transactions | | Stablecoin exclusion | Regulated USD stablecoins | 99% basis rule |
The House approach is narrower — it exempts only network gas fees up to $10, not the underlying purchase. Sen. Cynthia Lummis's (R-WY) Senate bill proposes a $300 per-transaction threshold covering all crypto purchases, with a $5,000 annual cap, inflation-adjusted from 2026. The Lummis bill's $300 threshold would not apply to exchanging crypto into cash, stablecoins, property used in business, or property held for income production.
The stablecoin provision in H.R. 9178 eliminates gain/loss recognition on regulated U.S. dollar stablecoins entirely. The PARITY Act's approach adds a deemed-basis rule: no gain or loss is recognized when basis is within 1% of redemption value, with the acquirer's basis deemed at $1.00.
Under current IRS guidance (Rev. Rul. 2023-14), mining and staking rewards are taxable as ordinary income at fair market value upon receipt. For validators running Ethereum nodes — receiving ETH rewards worth, say, $50 per day — this creates a tax obligation on tokens they have not sold. If the token's price declines before sale, validators owe taxes on income they never realized in dollar terms.
H.R. 9175 addresses this by allowing an election to defer taxation of newly created digital assets until sale or disposition. The bill also sources validation rewards to the taxpayer's residency rather than the geographic location of the validator node — a provision relevant to globally distributed proof-of-stake networks.
During the June 9 hearing, witness testimony split on this provision. Jason Somensatto of Coin Center argued newly issued rewards should be taxed only upon sale. Michael Kaercher of NYU Law cautioned that deferral elections "violate parity with traditional finance" and function as "interest-free government loans." Lawrence Zlatkin of Coinbase advocated for broad clarity: "When tax rules are clear, people comply. When they're unclear, complexity grows."
The Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation estimated the Lummis version of the staking/mining deferral provision — combined with the full package — would generate approximately $600 million in net revenue during the 2025-2034 budget window, primarily from the wash sale rule application offsetting revenue losses from deferral elections.
Digital assets are currently exempt from the wash sale rule (IRC § 1091), which prohibits investors from selling a security at a loss and repurchasing it within 30 days while claiming the tax deduction. This loophole allows crypto investors to harvest losses continuously — selling at a loss, immediately rebuying, and deducting the loss — in a practice impossible with stocks or bonds.
H.R. 9172 closes this gap by applying the standard 30-day wash sale rule to digital assets. It also extends constructive sale rules under IRC § 1259, which address situations where investors hold offsetting positions that effectively lock in gains without triggering a taxable event.
The Lummis Senate bill includes the same wash sale provision. According to EY, the industry "largely views wash sale rule application to digital assets as inevitable." The revenue generated from closing this loophole is the primary offset for the revenue cost of de minimis exemptions and deferral elections elsewhere in the package.
The Senate Finance Committee has been preparing its own digital asset tax framework since July 2023, when Chair Crapo and Ranking Member Wyden jointly requested stakeholder input. Key milestones:
The Senate framework is described as "more similar than not" to the House package, which raises the odds of bicameral alignment — a notable contrast to the CLARITY Act market-structure legislation, where House and Senate versions have diverged on key jurisdictional questions.
Chairman Smith has been explicit about process requirements: "It needs to be bipartisan or I have no desire to move it." This contrasts with the CLARITY Act's party-line dynamics, where the Senate Banking Committee advanced the bill 15-9 largely along party lines.
The PARITY Act's bipartisan provenance — co-sponsored by Democrat Horsford and Republican Miller — provides the template. As Horsford stated at Consensus Miami in May 2026: "PARITY is designed to set a durable floor, not to be the last word."
The legislative push occurs against the backdrop of the IRS's own reporting infrastructure buildout:
A CoinTracker-Coinbase survey of 3,000 U.S. crypto users found that only 49% correctly identified when a taxable event occurs. The gap between enforcement infrastructure and taxpayer understanding creates a compliance risk that the legislative package partially addresses — but the exclusion of DeFi-native activity from both 1099-DA reporting and most of the proposed bills leaves a significant portion of on-chain economic activity in regulatory ambiguity.
Brokers have indicated they need a minimum 18 months lead time for system updates to implement any new legislative requirements, according to EY testimony.
The crypto tax reform effort intersects with the sector's fundamental economic sustainability question. On-chain fee revenues across all blockchain networks total approximately $13-14 billion annually, according to cross-chain analysis. The proposed tax framework would affect how that revenue — and the far larger pool of speculative gains, staking rewards, and mining income — is treated by the largest single-country tax authority.
Several provisions have direct implications for value flows:
Staking deferral reduces the effective cost of validation, potentially increasing the capital allocated to proof-of-stake networks. Current IRS treatment creates a marginal disincentive: validators face income tax on rewards at receipt, even when the underlying token's price may decline before sale. Removing this friction does not change the subsidy-driven nature of most staking rewards — Ethereum's 0.8% inflation and Solana's $4-5 billion in annual staking subsidies remain unchanged — but it eliminates a U.S.-specific tax penalty on participation.
Wash sale closure introduces a real cost for the first time. Crypto tax-loss harvesting has been a frictionless strategy since digital assets were excluded from wash sale rules. Applying the 30-day rule means losses can no longer be harvested and immediately recaptured. This affects trading behavior and potentially reduces the artificial volume associated with tax-motivated round-trips.
De minimis exemptions address a prerequisite for crypto payment adoption. If every sub-$10 gas fee requires cost-basis computation, the compliance overhead exceeds the transaction value. The provision does not make crypto payments competitive with credit cards on economics — interchange fees of 1.5-3% versus blockchain gas fees that vary unpredictably — but it removes a bureaucratic barrier.
The crypto tax legislative effort represents one of the few areas of U.S. digital asset policy where bipartisan alignment appears structurally viable. The CLARITY Act stalled on partisan disputes over Trump administration crypto holdings; the GENIUS Act stablecoin rules face a six-agency, nine-day sprint to finalize; the SEC's Regulation Crypto rulemaking is subject to comment periods and potential legal challenges. Tax policy, by contrast, offers concrete revenue offsets (wash sale rule), clear constituency demand (67 million holders facing reporting complexity), and bipartisan sponsors.
The substantive question is whether the framework addresses symptoms or structure. Exempting $10 gas fees and deferring staking taxes reduces friction for existing participants but does not resolve the fundamental mismatch between a tax code designed for identifiable issuers, custodial intermediaries, and reportable transactions — and an asset class where a significant share of economic activity occurs on permissionless networks beyond the reach of 1099-DA reporting.
The 18-month broker implementation timeline means legislation signed in late 2026 would not become operational until 2028. In the interim, 67 million taxpayers navigate a hybrid regime: new reporting obligations without updated substantive rules. The gap is narrowing, but it has not closed.