Less than 24 hours after the CLARITY Act failed to clear its Senate procedural hurdle, U.S. lawmakers advanced another major piece of crypto legislation. The House Ways and Means Committee voted 38–5 to approve the Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act, a bipartisan bill designed to overhaul how cryptocurrencies are taxed in the United States by addressing everyday transactions, mining and staking rewards, crypto lending, charitable donations and tax-reporting requirements.
Small Crypto Transactions Get Tax Relief
One of the bill’s biggest goals is making cryptocurrency easier to use for everyday payments.
Under current rules, spending crypto can create a taxable event regardless of how small the transaction is. The legislation would reduce some of those compliance burdens, including special treatment for certain stablecoin transactions and blockchain network fees.
The legislation also includes several other major changes:
- Clarifies taxation of mining and staking rewards
- Extends certain tax rules used by traditional financial assets to crypto
- Allows qualifying crypto dealers and traders to use mark-to-market accounting
- Simplifies rules surrounding certain crypto donations to charities
- Creates a voluntary disclosure program for taxpayers correcting previous crypto tax issues
- Applies existing anti-abuse provisions to digital assets
Wash-Sale Rules Would Finally Apply to Crypto
The legislation would also close one of crypto’s longstanding tax differences from stocks.
Traditional securities are subject to the wash-sale rule, which generally prevents investors from selling an asset for a tax-deductible loss and immediately buying substantially the same investment back.
H.R. 10357 would extend existing wash-sale and other anti-abuse rules to digital assets, bringing their tax treatment closer to traditional financial markets.
Mining and Staking Get More Defined Tax Rules
The bill also tackles uncertainty surrounding mining and staking rewards.
Earlier proposals incorporated into the package sought to establish clearer rules for when newly created crypto received through network participation becomes taxable. The committee says the broader legislation is intended to provide more predictable treatment for miners, validators and other taxpayers earning digital assets through blockchain networks.
Crypto Lending Moves Closer to Traditional Finance
Another important provision could change how certain crypto loans are treated.
The legislation would extend an existing tax-code safe harbor to qualifying digital-asset lending transactions, potentially allowing crypto to be loaned under specified conditions without the transfer itself automatically triggering a taxable event.
It would also provide digital-asset traders and dealers access to some accounting rules already available to comparable participants in traditional financial markets.
Crypto Tax Bill Gets Bipartisan Support
Unlike the CLARITY Act’s 49–50 Senate procedural defeat, the Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act moved through the House committee by a wide margin.
The 38–5 vote sends H.R. 10357 toward consideration by the full House. The legislation would still need to pass both chambers of Congress in matching form before it could become law.
The two votes also deal with different parts of crypto regulation. The CLARITY Act focuses primarily on market structure and regulatory jurisdiction, while the Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act focuses specifically on how crypto activity is treated under the federal tax code.
Crypto Legislation Isn’t Finished in Washington
The CLARITY Act setback created uncertainty around comprehensive U.S. crypto market-structure legislation, but the tax committee vote shows that other digital-asset bills continue to move through Congress.
If enacted, the Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act would represent the first comprehensive federal legislation specifically addressing the substantive tax treatment of digital assets, according to the House Ways and Means Committee.
For crypto users, the bill could eventually affect everything from buying something with stablecoins and earning staking rewards to lending digital assets, donating crypto and claiming investment losses. For now, however, H.R. 10357 has cleared only the committee stage and still faces additional votes before any of those proposed changes become law.
