Way & Means Says "Let's Tax" Crypto: House Panel Pushes Digital Asset Certainty Past Committee 🧾

The U.S. House Ways and Means Committee voted 38-5 on September 16 to advance the Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act, H.R. 10357, marking the first comprehensive federal tax framework for digital assets and sending the 114-page package to the full House for consideration. Committee Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., said after the markup, "This is a historic moment for this Committee: after more than a year of working together, Republican and Democrat Members have come together to establish the first-ever tax framework for digital assets." The vote came less than 24 hours after the Senate failed to advance the CLARITY Act, the industry's separate market-structure priority, which did not secure the 60 votes needed to invoke cloture on September 15.

The bill, introduced by Smith and noticed for markup on Monday alongside six other measures, creates a de minimis exemption for qualifying network or transaction fees of $10 or less, allowing taxpayers to disregard gains or losses on those payments. It would use the redemption value of qualifying U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoins as their tax basis when purchased near that value, extend wash-sale and constructive-sale rules to digital assets, and exempt qualifying digital-asset loans from treatment as taxable sales. The package also provides simplified accounting for widely traded crypto assets, establishes digital-asset broker requirements, and creates a voluntary disclosure program allowing eligible taxpayers to amend past returns and pay outstanding taxes, interest, and penalties.

Income from blockchain validator activities would be classified as ordinary income under the bill, with rules determining whether it is sourced inside or outside the United States, and qualifying investment trusts would be permitted to stake digital assets without losing their trust status. Lawmakers and industry groups had also pressed for inclusion of Representative Mike Carey's Tax Clarity for Mining and Staking Act, H.R. 9175, which would have let miners and stakers elect to defer recognizing newly created tokens as income until the assets were sold. That reward-deferral provision is absent from the package as marked up, leaving mining and staking rewards taxable when received or brought under the recipient's control. The Blockchain Association, Crypto Council for Innovation and Digital Chamber had urged Congress to pass Carey's bill as introduced and opposed a five-year cap on the deferral.

The $10 small-transactions threshold is lower than some earlier proposals but is positioned as necessary to make digital assets more practical for routine payments. With the markup concluded, the legislation must clear the full House, the Senate and the President before becoming law, and observers noted the narrow congressional calendar leaves roughly five weeks of scheduled session between the November elections and the start of the next Congress in January. The committee action stops short of resolving the Senate's parallel fight over digital-asset market structure, where eight banking trade groups on Monday urged Senate leaders John Thune and Chuck Schumer to tighten the CLARITY Act's stablecoin rewards restrictions, arguing that exceptions could pull deposits away from banks. For now, the tax bill's bipartisan committee vote stands as the clearest legislative win for the crypto industry in a week dominated by the CLARITY Act's collapse.