The U.S. House Ways and Means Committee released a 114-page crypto tax package on September 15, 2026, consolidating months of bipartisan drafting into the Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act (H.R. 10357). The bill is scheduled for markup at 10:00 a.m. ET on Wednesday, September 16. If it clears commi...
"PARITY is designed to set a durable floor, not to be the last word." — Rep. Steven Horsford (D-NV), Consensus Miami, May 2026
The U.S. House Ways and Means Committee released a 114-page crypto tax package on September 15, 2026, consolidating months of bipartisan drafting into the Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act (H.R. 10357). The bill is scheduled for markup at 10:00 a.m. ET on Wednesday, September 16. If it clears committee, it would mark the first standalone federal tax legislation for digital assets to advance this far in Congress.
The package addresses five core areas: a de minimis exemption for network fees under $10, extension of wash-sale and constructive-sale rules to crypto, a deemed-basis rule for qualifying stablecoins, classification of validator income as ordinary income, and updated broker reporting requirements. The Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) scores the wash-sale provision alone at $2.074 billion in new revenue over fiscal years 2026–2036. A companion mining-and-staking deferral provision, estimated to cost $2.956 billion over the same period, was dropped from the final text.
Rep. Steven Horsford (D-NV), previously a key Democratic holdout on the committee, confirmed support for the latest language, telling Punchbowl News that the bill will receive bipartisan sign-off. The markup arrives one day after the Senate's cloture vote on the CLARITY Act, creating a 48-hour legislative window that may determine the trajectory of U.S. crypto policy for the 119th Congress.
The Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act, introduced by Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-MO), consolidates several proposals debated at a committee hearing in June 2026. The bill runs 114 pages and amends the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 across multiple sections.
Core provisions:
The bill does not include a tax deferral election for mining and staking rewards — a provision that was present in earlier drafts and the companion H.R. 9175.
Under current law, every use of cryptocurrency to pay a gas fee or network fee is a taxable disposition, regardless of size. A user paying $0.03 in ETH gas to execute a swap technically owes capital gains reporting on the difference between cost basis and fair market value of the ETH used.
H.R. 10357 would exempt qualifying fees at or below $10 from gain/loss recognition. The provision is not unlimited: users who executed more than 5,000 transfers in the prior tax year are excluded. This effectively carves out high-frequency traders, algorithmic strategies, and automated bots from the relief, directing the benefit toward retail users conducting ordinary on-chain activity.
The 5,000-transfer threshold works out to approximately 13.7 transactions per day. According to on-chain analytics, the median Ethereum wallet executes fewer than 50 transactions per year, placing the vast majority of retail users within the exemption.
H.R. 9172, the Applying Existing Tax Anti-Abuse Rules to Digital Assets Act, is bundled into the markup alongside H.R. 10357. Sponsored by House Budget Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-TX), the bill would close a longstanding asymmetry: under current law, the wash-sale rule covers stocks and securities but not digital assets.
This means crypto holders can currently sell a token at a loss, repurchase the identical token within minutes, and still claim the realized loss for tax purposes. The bill would apply the standard 30-day wash-sale window (30 days before or after the sale) to covered digital assets. Qualifying U.S. dollar stablecoins are exempt from the wash-sale provisions.
The constructive-sale rules would also extend to crypto, preventing holders from using derivatives or offsetting positions to lock in gains without triggering a taxable event.
The JCT scores this provision at $2.074 billion in revenue over fiscal years 2026–2036. This figure represents the estimated value of tax-loss harvesting strategies that would be curtailed.
A central provision creates a "deemed-basis rule" for regulated, dollar-pegged payment stablecoins. Under this framework, no gain or loss is recognized on the sale or exchange of a qualifying stablecoin unless the taxpayer's basis falls below 99% of its redemption value. The acquirer's basis is deemed to be $1.00.
To qualify, the stablecoin must be a payment stablecoin issued by a permitted issuer under the GENIUS Act, acquired for a price within 1% of $1.00.
The practical effect: using USDC or USDT to buy coffee, pay invoices, or settle cross-border transfers would no longer generate a taxable event. This aligns stablecoin treatment with the functional reality that these instruments operate as digital cash, not speculative assets. The provision has implications for the 25% of businesses now using stablecoins for payroll and the growing volume of stablecoin-settled B2B payments.
The companion Tax Clarity for Mining and Staking Act (H.R. 9175), introduced June 8, 2026, would have allowed miners and stakers to elect treatment of newly created tokens as self-created property — deferring taxation until disposal rather than recognizing ordinary income at receipt.
The JCT scored this deferral at $2.956 billion in foregone revenue over 2026–2036. Republicans on the committee considered limiting the deferral to a five-year period, but ultimately dropped the provision entirely from H.R. 10357.
The final bill retains the classification of validator income as ordinary income and establishes sourcing rules. The Blockchain Association had advocated for the deferral, with CEO Summer Mersinger arguing that "the tax code should not force Americans who help secure decentralized networks to sell assets before they can reasonably monetize them simply to satisfy an immediate tax obligation."
The exclusion of the deferral provision is the most significant concession in the bill. It preserves the existing tax treatment where staking rewards are taxable as ordinary income upon receipt — a position the IRS formalized in Revenue Ruling 2023-14 and recently defended in the Jarrett v. United States litigation.
JCT revenue estimates for the package components:
| Provision | 10-Year Score (FY 2026–2036) | |---|---| | Wash-sale and constructive-sale rules (H.R. 9172) | +$2.074 billion | | Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act provisions | +$1.362 billion | | Mining/staking deferral (H.R. 9175) — dropped | -$2.956 billion |
By excluding the mining/staking deferral, the package becomes a net revenue raiser. The combined scored provisions generate approximately $3.4 billion over ten years. This matters for procedural reasons: a revenue-positive bill can advance through reconciliation without requiring offsetting spending cuts.
The tax bill arrives as IRS broker reporting requirements are phasing in. Beginning with the 2025 tax year, U.S. digital asset brokers must report transactions using Form 1099-DA. The 2025 forms report gross proceeds only. Cost-basis reporting begins with the 2026 tax year — but only for "covered securities," defined as assets acquired on or after January 1, 2026, and held continuously at the same broker.
This creates what tax practitioners call the "basis gap": tokens transferred from hardware wallets or acquired before 2026 may be reported to the IRS with a $0 cost basis, potentially overstating taxable gains. The IRS is also finalizing changes to its Voluntary Disclosure Program, with IRS Criminal Investigation Chief Jarod Koopman announcing on August 25, 2026, that a revised program targeting crypto noncompliance is expected within 60 days. The agency reported reclaiming over $1 billion in taxes from virtual currency noncompliance in 2025.
Internationally, both the OECD's Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF) and the EU's DAC8 directive became operational on January 1, 2026, creating a global reporting baseline that the U.S. domestic framework now aligns with.
Coinbase VP of U.S. Policy Kara Calvert framed the tax bill as completing a "trifecta" alongside the GENIUS Act (stablecoin regulation) and the CLARITY Act (market structure), stating it would bring the U.S. "98% of the way" toward establishing comprehensive crypto regulatory infrastructure.
The trifecta theory faces operational headwinds. The GENIUS Act passed and was signed into law. The CLARITY Act faced a cloture vote on September 15, with Polymarket odds for passage in 2026 having collapsed from 82% in February to 16% as of September 6. Remaining obstacles include ethics provisions targeting senior government officials' crypto holdings, DeFi developer liability under Section 604, and a stablecoin yield provision that threatens an estimated $1.35 billion in annual Coinbase USDC rewards revenue.
The tax bill exists on a separate procedural track. According to EY tax experts, the crypto tax bill can advance through Ways and Means independently of the market-structure legislation, using either standalone floor action or incorporation into a broader tax reconciliation vehicle.
Crypto industry spending on federal lobbying reached $8.6 million in the first half of 2026, according to Bloomberg Government. Election-cycle contributions are substantially larger: Ripple Labs contributed approximately $49 million in the 2026 cycle, Crypto.com spent $38.6 million, and Coinbase spent $35.2 million, with the majority flowing to Fairshake, the industry's primary super PAC.
The industry's lobbying focus has shifted toward tax policy after the GENIUS Act cleared the stablecoin front. The Blockchain Association, Digital Chamber, and Crypto Council for Innovation jointly submitted a letter supporting the mining/staking deferral — a provision that was ultimately excluded. The gap between industry preference and legislative outcome on the deferral question illustrates the limits of lobby influence when provisions carry multi-billion-dollar revenue scores.
The Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act represents the first serious congressional attempt to resolve the structural mismatch between existing Internal Revenue Code provisions and how digital assets actually function. The de minimis exemption and stablecoin deemed-basis rule address real compliance burdens that have made routine on-chain activity impractical from a tax-reporting standpoint. The wash-sale extension closes a genuine regulatory gap.
The bill's path after committee remains uncertain. It could advance as standalone legislation, attach to a broader tax reconciliation package, or stall if the CLARITY Act's trajectory absorbs legislative attention. The September 16 markup will determine whether the 119th Congress produces any tax legislation for digital assets, or whether the issue carries over into the next session with a growing IRS enforcement apparatus operating without updated statutory guidance.