The U.S. House Ways and Means Committee on June 9, 2026, holds its first legislative hearing on seven standalone crypto tax discussion drafts — the most comprehensive attempt to overhaul digital asset taxation since the IRS classified Bitcoin as property in 2014. Chairman Jason Smith (R-MO) circu...
"Getting digital-asset tax treatment right is essential to compliance, to everyday use. The real question is whether the rules are clear, administrable, and aligned with economic reality. They aren't." — Alison Mangiero, Executive Director, Proof of Stake Alliance / Crypto Council for Innovation
The U.S. House Ways and Means Committee on June 9, 2026, holds its first legislative hearing on seven standalone crypto tax discussion drafts — the most comprehensive attempt to overhaul digital asset taxation since the IRS classified Bitcoin as property in 2014. Chairman Jason Smith (R-MO) circulated the drafts on June 4, covering staking deferral, gas-fee de minimis relief, wash-sale extension, stablecoin safe harbors, DeFi lending treatment, charitable donation rules, and a voluntary disclosure amnesty program.
The hearing arrives at a critical inflection point. An estimated 67 million Americans — one in four adults — now hold cryptocurrency, according to the National Cryptocurrency Association's May 2026 report. The Treasury Department has estimated a $50–60 billion annual crypto tax gap. Meanwhile, Form 1099-DA broker reporting went live for the 2025 tax year, and the OECD's Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF) took effect across 52 countries on January 1, 2026. The legislative push reflects a recognition that enforcement tools are outpacing the tax code itself.
This is a discussion hearing, not a markup or floor vote. No law is enacted on June 9. The path to enactment requires committee markup, House floor passage, Senate concurrence, and a presidential signature. But the structural approach — seven modular bills rather than one omnibus package — is designed to build targeted coalitions around individual provisions, increasing the odds that at least some measures advance.
The Ways and Means Committee circulated seven discussion drafts addressing distinct segments of crypto tax policy. Four have been named publicly:
1. Tax Clarity for Mining and Staking Act Defers taxation of mining and staking rewards from receipt to disposition (sale or exchange). Under current IRS guidance, staking rewards are taxable as ordinary income at the moment a taxpayer gains "dominion and control." This bill would eliminate the so-called phantom income problem, where holders owe taxes on tokens they have not sold and may have declined in value since receipt. The draft describes the approach as "a necessary compromise between immediate taxation upon dominion and control and full deferral until disposition."
2. Less Tax Paperwork for Digital Asset Owners Act Creates a $10 de minimis exemption for network gas fees, capped at 5,000 transactions per taxpayer per year. This is narrower than it appears: it covers only the network transaction fee itself, not the underlying crypto transaction. Spending appreciated Bitcoin on goods or services remains a fully taxable event requiring capital gains calculation.
3. Digital Assets Voluntary Disclosure Program Act Opens a two-year amnesty window for U.S. holders to self-report past unreported crypto income. Taxpayers who pay owed taxes or enter a payment plan receive a shield from future criminal liability for the disclosed activity. The program targets staking income, trading gains, and disposals from prior tax years.
4. Digital Asset PARITY Act (bipartisan) Introduced May 19, 2026, by Reps. Max Miller (R-OH) and Steven Horsford (D-NV), this bill bundles several cross-cutting provisions: extension of wash-sale rules to digital assets, application of constructive-sale rules, and extension of Section 1058 securities lending treatment to qualifying digital asset loans. Only fungible, liquid assets such as BTC and ETH qualify for lending treatment; NFTs and synthetic instruments are excluded.
5–7. Unnamed drafts address stablecoin tax treatment (treating regulated payment stablecoins as cash-like instruments with no gain or loss recognized unless cost basis falls below 99% of redemption value), charitable donation reforms (waiving appraisal requirements for digital asset donations exceeding $5,000), and a Treasury study mandate on broader de minimis exemptions with a one-year reporting deadline.
The Treasury Department has estimated that $50–60 billion in annual tax revenue goes uncollected from digital asset transactions. Senators Elizabeth Warren, Bob Casey, Richard Blumenthal, and Bernie Sanders cited this figure in a 2023 letter urging the Treasury and IRS to act. Barclays has suggested the actual gap is likely larger.
The compliance data is stark. An IRS study found that between 2013 and 2021, approximately 17 million cryptocurrency "sales" were reported. Independent surveys suggest the actual user base exceeds 67 million Americans. Research cited by CCN indicates only 6.5% of crypto traders reported relevant tax information.
The 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act estimated that digital asset broker reporting requirements would raise $28 billion over a decade. Form 1099-DA, which went into effect for the 2025 tax year, is the first tangible enforcement product of that legislation.
Two parallel enforcement regimes are now operational:
Domestic: Form 1099-DA. For tax year 2025, brokers must report gross proceeds from all digital asset sales to both taxpayers and the IRS. Cost basis reporting becomes mandatory for "covered securities" — assets acquired on or after January 1, 2026, and held continuously in the same broker account until sale. Assets acquired before that date or transferred from external wallets are classified as "noncovered securities," and brokers are not required to report basis on those. The IRS receives copies of all 1099-DA filings, enabling automated matching against individual tax returns.
International: CARF/DAC8. The OECD's Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework took effect January 1, 2026, across 52 jurisdictions. The EU's DAC8 directive requires member states to transpose provisions by December 31, 2025, with first reporting exchanges scheduled by September 30, 2027. As of March 2026, 76 Global Forum members have committed to CARF exchanges, with the U.S. scheduled to begin in 2027. Reporting entities include crypto exchanges, wallet providers, and certain DeFi platforms facilitating transactions.
The convergence is significant. In 2025, 88% of centralized exchange trading volume occurred on non-U.S. platforms, according to the Crypto Council for Innovation. CARF closes the offshore gap by enabling automatic cross-border information sharing between tax authorities.
The House drafts do not operate in a vacuum. Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) introduced competing digital asset tax legislation in the Senate with notably different thresholds:
| Provision | House Drafts | Senate (Lummis) | |---|---|---| | Staking/mining | Tax at disposition | Deferral up to 5 years, then ordinary income | | De minimis | $10 gas fee; 5,000 tx/year | $300 per transaction; $5,000 annual cap (inflation-adjusted) | | Wash sale | 30-day rule extended to crypto | Included | | Stablecoins | Cash-like (within 1% of $1.00) | Not specified | | Lending (§1058) | Extended to digital assets (PARITY Act) | Not specified |
The gap on de minimis is notable. The House's $10 gas-fee exemption is a micro-relief measure for network costs. The Lummis proposal's $300-per-transaction exemption would functionally eliminate capital gains reporting on small everyday purchases — buying coffee, paying for a subscription — which the crypto industry has lobbied for since at least 2017. The House punts this broader question to a Treasury study with a one-year deadline.
Chairman Smith has insisted that any bill the committee advances be bipartisan. The PARITY Act, co-sponsored by Miller and Horsford, meets that threshold. The wash-sale provision has the broadest consensus, as it aligns crypto with equity market rules and has appeared in multiple draft bills since 2021.
Two provisions carry outsized consequences for the DeFi sector:
Section 1058 extension to digital asset lending. If enacted, qualifying digital asset loans would not trigger taxable events — a material change from current ambiguity. DeFi lending protocols such as Aave (which generates over $100 million in annual DAO revenue) and Compound rely on users depositing tokens that are then loaned to borrowers. Under current rules, transferring tokens to a lending protocol may constitute a taxable disposition. The PARITY Act's Section 1058 extension would clarify this as a non-taxable loan, provided the asset is fungible and liquid, and the lender retains risk and opportunity for gain.
Stablecoin safe harbor. Treating regulated payment stablecoins as cash-like instruments eliminates capital gains tracking on minor fluctuations. The House draft sets the threshold at a 1% deviation from $1.00 redemption value — gains or losses below that margin are not recognized. This provision interacts directly with the GENIUS Act stablecoin framework, which establishes the regulatory category of "regulated payment stablecoins." A $200 de minimis stablecoin exemption appeared in the earlier PARITY Act draft from December 2025, though the current version addresses the issue through the 1% valuation threshold instead.
Chairman Smith framed the hearing explicitly in terms of U.S. competitiveness, stating on June 4, 2026: "America needs clear, modern tax rules to ensure we remain the crypto capital of the world." He cited the more than 60 million Americans who own cryptocurrency as justification for committee action.
The Crypto Council for Innovation called the hearing "an important first step" and outlined five principles for legislation: parity with traditional assets, preservation of core infrastructure, enablement of use cases, innovation fostering, and global competitiveness. CCI noted that more than half of American crypto holders do not understand basic taxability concepts related to their holdings.
The hearing comes as the House concurrently works on market structure (the CLARITY Act passed the House and faces a 60-vote Senate hurdle) and stablecoin regulation (the GENIUS Act has a July 18, 2026, implementation deadline but zero final rules issued as of June 8). The tax bills can advance independently of both — an advantage noted by EY experts who told Thomson Reuters that "crypto tax bills can move without market-structure law."
The modular seven-bill structure is deliberate. Rather than forcing votes on an omnibus package where any single controversial provision (wash-sale extension, for example) could sink the whole effort, the committee can advance consensus items individually. The voluntary disclosure program and the staking deferral are considered most likely to advance; the wash-sale extension, while broadly supported in principle, faces industry pushback on implementation timing.
The seven-bill package represents a shift from enforcement-only to enforcement-plus-accommodation. The IRS already has Form 1099-DA in production and CARF data sharing queued for 2027. The legislative question is no longer whether crypto will be taxed — that phase ended with the 2021 infrastructure bill — but how.
The structural approach of modular bills gives the committee flexibility to advance consensus provisions while parking contentious items. Staking deferral, the voluntary disclosure program, and stablecoin safe harbors have the clearest path. Wash-sale extension and comprehensive de minimis relief face longer timelines.
For the approximately $3.2 trillion crypto market, the economic stakes are material. Tax treatment directly affects the viability of everyday crypto payments, DeFi lending economics, and staking yield calculations. Unclear rules are not neutral — they function as a penalty on compliance and a subsidy for offshore activity. With 88% of centralized exchange volume already occurring outside the U.S. and CARF closing the offshore reporting gap, the window for establishing a workable domestic framework is narrowing.
The June 9 hearing is the first step. Whether it leads to enacted law before the midterm elections depends on whether the bipartisan framework holds as individual provisions meet floor votes.