The House Ways and Means Committee released a 114-page crypto tax bill one day before the Senate's cloture vote on the CLARITY Act. The tax package would exempt small network fees and extend wash-sale rules to digital assets, while the Senate vote needs seven Democrats to cross over to advance the broader market-structure bill.
House releases crypto tax bill ahead of Senate vote
The House Ways and Means Committee released a 114-page crypto tax bill on Monday night, one day before the Senate's scheduled vote on the CLARITY Act. Committee Chair Jason Smith, a Missouri Republican, unveiled the Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act, H.R. 10357, after lawmakers spent months on separate digital-asset tax proposals.
It is scheduled for markup at 10 a.m. ET on Wednesday, alongside unrelated tax and health care measures. One provision would exempt qualifying network and transaction fees under $10 from tax, though anyone who completed more than 5,000 transfers in the previous year would be excluded from that carve-out.
Beyond that, the package would extend wash-sale and constructive-sale rules to digital assets, closing a gap that currently lets investors sell a token at a loss, buy it back immediately, and still claim the loss. Qualified U.S. dollar stablecoins would stay exempt. That provision alone has been estimated to raise $2.074 billion over fiscal years 2026 through 2036.
Mining and staking tax timing remains the sharpest dispute inside the package. A separate proposal would let miners and stakers defer income recognition on new tokens until they sell, a provision estimated to cut federal revenue by $2.956 billion over the same decade. Republicans were reportedly considering removing that deferral entirely before the markup.
Senate faces a tight cloture test on CLARITY Act
The Senate is scheduled to hold a procedural cloture vote on the CLARITY Act on September 15, needing 60 votes to advance. Republicans hold 53 seats, so at least seven Democrats must cross over to clear that threshold. On September 14, Senate Democrats sent a counterproposal calling the Republican ethics package insufficient.
Sen. Cynthia Lummis told Bloomberg Crypto on September 15 that the CLARITY Act's Section 401 would let every U.S. bank freely buy and hold Bitcoin and other digital assets by listing such holdings as a permitted activity for national banks. According to Lummis: "BTC will increase dramatically", framing the change as a permissioning shift rather than a purchase mandate.
Banking groups oppose the bill, chiefly over a provision they say risks draining community bank deposits into stablecoin products. Seventeen state attorneys general, led by New York's Letitia James, have also warned the bill weakens state fraud enforcement tools.
Regulators say crypto rules move regardless
A failed cloture vote would not leave crypto oversight in a vacuum. SEC Chair Paul Atkins has said the agency's crypto agenda will proceed even if the CLARITY Act stalls, through Project Crypto and Regulation Crypto Assets. CFTC Chair Michael Selig has indicated market-structure rules are ready if Congress fails to act.
Sources: AMBCrypto, crypto.news, CoinGape
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