On September 16 local time, the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee approved the Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act (H.R. 10357) by 38 votes to 5, The Block reported. The bill sets out provisions across seven titles covering taxation of small fees, stablecoin transactions, lending, application of wash-sale rules, mining and staking income, and broker reporting obligations. Chair Jason Smith said the measure was the first tax framework for digital assets after more than a year of bipartisan work.
One key provision would prevent a taxpayer from recognizing a gain or loss on the disposal of a crypto asset used to pay certain small fees. For a network fee paid to validate a transaction, the total paid for that validation must be $10 or less. For brokerage, trading, liquidity-provision, and similar fees, the total fees paid in the relevant transaction must be $10 or less, and the fee must be paid in the same kind of crypto asset as the asset disposed of or acquired in that transaction. This would neither exempt every small purchase of goods from tax nor eliminate blockchain fees themselves.
Traders, brokers, and dealers in crypto assets; businesses that bundle or help validate transactions for others; and people who transferred crypto assets more than 5,000 times in the preceding tax year would generally be excluded from this special rule. Transfers made to pay small fees would not count toward the 5,000-transfer threshold. The bill would apply the fee provision to asset disposals on or after January 1, 2028.
The bill also contains a provision restricting taxpayers' ability to deduct losses. It would extend the wash-sale rule that applies to stocks and securities to traded digital assets, while generally excluding qualified dollar stablecoins. If a taxpayer sells an asset at a loss and acquires a substantially identical asset within 30 days before or after the sale, the loss could not be deducted immediately and would instead be reflected in the replacement asset's basis. Assets received through validation activities such as mining or staking, and regular acquisitions included in ordinary income, would not count as reacquisitions for this purpose. The bill sets September 15, 2026, as the starting date for disposals subject to this provision, earlier than the start date proposed for the fee rule.
The bill would also classify income from validation activities, including mining and staking, as ordinary income. According to The Block, Representative Steven Horsford, who worked on the bill, said it still did not resolve when mining and staking income should be recognized. Another provision would prevent a trustee from losing a trust's tax status solely because the trustee has authority to stake the crypto assets it holds. That special treatment would not apply if the trustee conducts digital-asset transaction validation as a business.
The committee vote is a step in the House legislative process, not the enactment of the proposed tax rules; further steps, including consideration by the full House, remain. The Block reported that attention would next turn to the Senate Finance Committee.