The U.S. House Ways and Means Committee held its first legislative hearing on digital asset taxation on June 9, 2026, reviewing seven discussion-draft bills that collectively represent the most significant proposed overhaul of crypto tax rules since the IRS classified digital assets as property i...
"When tax rules are clear, people comply. When they're unclear, complexity grows, costs rise, and economic activity moves elsewhere." — Lawrence Zlatkin, Vice President of Tax, Coinbase
The U.S. House Ways and Means Committee held its first legislative hearing on digital asset taxation on June 9, 2026, reviewing seven discussion-draft bills that collectively represent the most significant proposed overhaul of crypto tax rules since the IRS classified digital assets as property in 2014. The hearing — described by industry participants as the "third leg of the stool" alongside the GENIUS Act (stablecoins) and the CLARITY Act (market structure) — drew testimony from Fidelity, Coinbase, Coin Center, and NYU Tax Law Center on provisions ranging from a $10 gas-fee de minimis exclusion to the extension of wash-sale rules to digital assets.
Chairman Jason Smith cited 67 million American crypto holders and a market capitalization exceeding $2 trillion to justify the legislative push. The committee heard broad bipartisan agreement on reducing paperwork burdens for small transactions, but encountered a substantive split on whether mining and staking rewards should receive tax deferral until disposition — a provision that NYU's Michael Kaercher warned "functions as an interest-free loan from the government." No vote was taken; written submissions are due by June 23, 2026.
The committee circulated seven discussion drafts, each sponsored by a different Republican member, plus a Democratic amendment from Rep. Steven Horsford. The full bill texts remain unpublished pending the comment period. The named bills and their principal provisions:
H.R. 9178 — Less Tax Paperwork for Digital Asset Owners Act (Rep. Rudy Yakym). Excludes gain or loss on digital assets used for network fees (gas) below $10 per transaction, capped at 5,000 transactions per taxpayer annually. Separately exempts gain or loss on regulated U.S.-dollar stablecoins and creates a simplified accounting method election.
H.R. 9175 — Tax Clarity for Mining and Staking Act (Rep. Mike Carey). Permits taxpayers to elect deferral of income recognition on newly minted digital assets — from mining or staking — until sale or disposition. Allows grantor trusts holding digital assets to receive staking rewards without jeopardizing their tax status.
H.R. 9173 — Charitable Deductions for Digital Asset Donations Act (Rep. Mike Kelly). Waives the existing qualified appraisal requirement for charitable contributions of digital assets when the asset's value is determinable from reliable market prices. Under current rules, donations of property exceeding $5,000 require a qualified appraisal — a requirement that industry participants argue is impractical for exchange-traded digital assets with continuous price feeds.
H.R. 9176 — Providing Analogous Rules for Digital Assets (PAR) Act (Rep. David Kustoff). Extends three existing securities tax provisions to digital assets: the foreign investment safe harbor under IRC § 864, securities lending rules under IRC § 1058 that allow lending without triggering taxable events, and mark-to-market accounting under IRC § 475 for dealers and traders.
H.R. 9174 — Digital Assets Voluntary Disclosure Program Act (Rep. Aaron Bean). Establishes a one-time, two-year amnesty window for taxpayers to correct prior filings related to digital asset transactions, with reduced penalties for voluntary compliance.
H.R. 9172 — Applying Existing Tax Anti-Abuse Rules to Digital Assets Act (Rep. Jodey Arrington). Extends the 30-day wash-sale rule under IRC § 1091 and constructive sale rules to digital assets — currently the single largest asymmetry between crypto and traditional securities tax treatment.
Horsford Amendment (Rep. Steven Horsford, D-NV). Limits any staking/mining deferral election to five years maximum. Requires actual sale proceeds — rather than appraisals — to establish value for charitable donations of non-widely-traded digital assets.
Additionally, the bipartisan Digital Asset PARITY Act (H.R. 8899), introduced May 19 by Reps. Max Miller (R-OH) and Steven Horsford (D-NV), serves as a broader framework bill addressing stablecoin exemptions for gains under $200, staking deferral, and wash-sale extension in a single package.
The hearing exposed a significant gap between the House and Senate approaches to de minimis thresholds — the floor below which small crypto transactions would not trigger capital gains reporting.
The House draft (H.R. 9178) sets a $10 threshold exclusively for network transaction fees (gas), capped at 5,000 transactions per year. This is narrow by design: it covers the gas fee on an Ethereum transaction, not the underlying purchase.
By contrast, Senator Cynthia Lummis's Senate proposal sets a $300 per-transaction threshold with a $5,000 annual cap, inflation-adjusted from 2026. The Senate version would cover the entire transaction, not just the fee.
The practical stakes are substantial. Coinbase's Lawrence Zlatkin testified that his platform processed approximately 800 million transactions, with roughly 50% under $100. IRS data from 2025 1099-DA filings showed approximately 50% of reported transactions involved amounts below $10. Chairman Smith illustrated the compliance burden: a $5 coffee purchase using crypto currently generates two tax forms. The committee appeared to agree in principle that micro-transactions should not trigger reporting, but the threshold — $10 or $300 — remains a point of negotiation between chambers.
The most contentious provision debated was H.R. 9175's proposal to defer taxation of mining and staking rewards until sale or disposition.
Under current IRS guidance (Revenue Ruling 2023-14), staking rewards are taxable as ordinary income at fair market value upon receipt. The crypto industry has long contested this position. Coin Center's Jason Somensatto argued that block rewards constitute "created property" — analogous to self-created intellectual property or an artist's painting — and that under longstanding tax doctrine, created property is not taxed at creation but at disposition.
Fidelity's Sarah Reilly testified that tax uncertainty around staking "affects not only those directly involved in the crypto space, but also the financial sector at large," citing the growing intersection between staking and tokenized securities.
Opposition was pointed. NYU Tax Law Center's Michael Kaercher testified that deferral "violates parity with traditional finance" and amounts to "an interest-free loan from the government." He identified a structural risk: partnership structures could convert the temporary deferral into permanent tax elimination through stepped-up basis at death. Kaercher suggested that if Congress proceeds with deferral, a window "as low as a year" would address liquidity concerns without creating an open-ended preference.
Representatives Lloyd Doggett (D-TX), Linda Sánchez (D-CA), and Judy Chu (D-CA) raised concerns about establishing "special tax advantages" for the crypto sector, questioning whether deferral would create asymmetries not available to recipients of interest, dividends, or other forms of passive income.
The Horsford Amendment attempts to split the difference: deferral allowed, but capped at five years.
The offshore dimension adds urgency. According to data cited at the hearing, approximately 70% of staking infrastructure across the top 10 blockchain protocols now operates outside the United States, and 88% of centralized exchange trading volume occurred on non-U.S. exchanges in 2025.
H.R. 9172 would extend the 30-day wash-sale rule to digital assets, eliminating what industry observers and tax authorities have identified as the single largest tax arbitrage available in crypto.
Under current law, IRC § 1091 applies only to "stock or securities." Because the IRS classifies crypto as property, investors can sell at a loss, immediately repurchase the same asset, and claim the tax deduction — a strategy unavailable to equity and bond investors. The Biden administration's FY2025 budget estimated that closing this loophole could generate approximately $10 billion in additional tax revenue in its first year.
Coin Center's Somensatto testified that "Congress can make crypto tax compliance simpler without creating special tax preferences," signaling that even industry advocates accept the wash-sale extension as a reasonable parity measure. However, operational challenges remain. Coin Center has separately warned that wash-sale implementation for digital assets — where assets trade 24/7 across hundreds of venues — would impose implementation costs on brokers that "far exceed any potential revenue gains."
The committee appeared to have the strongest bipartisan agreement on this provision. Both parties framed it as a matter of parity rather than preference.
H.R. 9178 exempts gain or loss on "regulated U.S.-dollar stablecoins" from capital gains reporting. The PARITY Act (H.R. 8899) sets a more specific threshold: stablecoin gains under $200 or gains below 1% of the transaction value would be exempt.
Coinbase's Zlatkin urged Congress to "treat stablecoins like cash" for tax purposes, arguing that current rules create friction for a payment instrument that is designed to maintain a stable $1 peg. The practical issue: a stablecoin purchased at $1.0001 and spent at $1.0003 currently generates a taxable event with a $0.0002 gain — requiring documentation, cost basis tracking, and reporting.
The provision is designed to complement the GENIUS Act, which established the federal regulatory framework for payment stablecoins. H.R. 9178 ties its stablecoin tax exemption to "GENIUS-compliant" status, creating a direct link between a stablecoin's regulatory classification and its tax treatment.
The hearing took place against the backdrop of the first full reporting cycle under IRS Form 1099-DA, which requires brokers to report digital asset transactions for tax year 2025. The rollout has encountered significant friction.
Major exchanges including Coinbase and Kraken reported delays in issuing 1099-DA forms. A structural problem emerged: brokers are not required to report cost basis for assets acquired before 2025 or transferred from external wallets. When a taxpayer transfers Bitcoin from a hardware wallet to an exchange and sells, the exchange may report a $0 cost basis to the IRS — triggering automated mismatch notices.
The wallet-by-wallet cost basis tracking rule compounds the challenge. Each broker account must track cost basis independently; transfers between wallets do not automatically transfer cost basis. Fidelity's Reilly testified that "most relevant tax rules were written without contemplating digital assets" and called the current guidance "inadequate."
Separately, over 50% of American crypto holders report not understanding when their holdings become taxable, according to survey data cited at the hearing — a compliance gap that the committee's bills aim to address through simplification rather than enforcement.
The Crypto Council for Innovation characterized the hearing as "deliberate, structured engagement," noting Chairman Smith's tactical choice to advance seven separate discussion drafts rather than one omnibus bill. Breaking the package apart allows the committee to build coalitions around individual provisions — particularly the less contentious ones like de minimis relief and charitable donation simplification.
The hearing positions crypto taxation as the third component of a regulatory triad: the GENIUS Act (signed into law, governing stablecoins), the CLARITY Act (progressing through committee, governing market structure), and now tax reform. Industry lobbyists have framed this sequencing as essential: without clear tax rules, the regulatory and market-structure frameworks remain incomplete.
No revenue estimates from the Congressional Budget Office or Joint Committee on Taxation have been published for the individual discussion drafts. The committee's next procedural step would be markup, though no date has been scheduled.
The Ways and Means hearing produced no law and no vote. What it produced was a structured legislative framework that, for the first time, addresses the full spectrum of crypto tax issues in a single committee process — from micro-transaction de minimis relief to the treatment of staking income to the closure of the wash-sale loophole.
The economic substance of these proposals varies widely. Stablecoin exemptions and de minimis relief reduce compliance friction without creating material revenue loss. Staking deferral, by contrast, shifts the timing of tax collection in ways that may become permanent through estate-planning structures. The wash-sale extension eliminates a genuine arbitrage at the cost of significant broker implementation burden.
For an industry that generates an estimated $13-14 billion in annual on-chain revenue against $55-71 billion in subsidies, tax clarity represents an incremental but real step toward a self-sustaining economic model. Clear rules reduce the compliance tax — the time, money, and legal fees spent navigating ambiguity — which functions as a hidden cost layer borne by every participant. Whether that clarity arrives in 2026 or slips into 2027 depends on whether the committee can move from discussion drafts to markup before the legislative calendar narrows.