The House Ways and Means Committee approved the Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act on a 38-5 vote Wednesday, advancing the first crypto-specific tax framework to clear a congressional committee. The bill, H.R. 10357, cleared the panel roughly 20 hours after the Senate blocked the CLARITY Act’s procedural motion 49-50, putting tax policy — not market-structure legislation — on the front burner for the remainder of the 119th Congress.
Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act: A Senate CLARITY Defeat Sets Stage for Tax-First Strategy
The timing was deliberate. Less than 24 hours before the Ways and Means markup, the Senate failed to invoke cloture on the CLARITY Act, 49-50, ending the chamber’s push for a market-structure bill and effectively ceding the crypto legislative agenda to tax writers. Senator Thom Tillis, one of the bill’s co-authors, switched to a “no” vote specifically so he could file a motion to reconsider — a procedural lifeline that keeps CLARITY alive on the calendar for the remaining 22 working days. But with the September clock running, Chairman Jason Smith framed the panel’s action as a pivot toward the policy area where movement is actually possible.
De Minimis Exemption and Stablecoin Valuation Rules
For retail users, the most tangible provision is a $10 de minimis threshold for network and transaction fees — gas payments and brokerage or liquidity charges — that would apply to dispositions occurring after December 31, 2027. Reporting is waived for any single fee at or below that floor. The bill also rewrites how dollar-pegged stablecoins are measured. Issuers and holders will value coins pegged within 99.5% to 100.5% of one dollar at their redemption value rather than secondary-market price, a change effective for tax years beginning after December 31, 2026. Joint Committee on Taxation staff said the valuation shift is intended to eliminate mark-to-market volatility for stablecoins that, in practice, never trade away from par.
Wash-Sale Expansion and Mark-to-Market Accounting
The package extends the stock and securities wash-sale rule — currently inapplicable to crypto — to widely traded digital assets and their wrapped or tokenized equivalents. JCT projects that provision alone will raise $1.707 billion through 2036. A second pillar allows qualifying dealers and traders to elect mark-to-market accounting, the framework already used by commodities dealers and securities professionals. That election is forecast to generate $2.332 billion over the same window. After offsets, JCT scored the net revenue impact at roughly +$500 million for fiscal years 2027 through 2036 — a small but positive number that improves the bill’s odds under the chamber’s active-paygo posture.
Carve-Outs and Rejected Amendments
Not every corner of the digital-asset economy is covered. The bill exempts brokers, dealers, and validators, along with any taxpayer who executed 5,000 or more covered transactions in the prior year — the high-volume tier that committee staff argued is already adequately captured by existing information-reporting rules. Two Democratic amendments failed. A 1099 reporting requirement for non-custodial DeFi activity, offered by Representative Lloyd Doggett, was defeated 12-28, with several Democrats joining Republicans in arguing that the infrastructure to capture wallet-to-wallet data does not yet exist. A separate amendment directing a Treasury study on mining-related energy consumption fell 16-25. Both were opposed by the majority on jurisdictional grounds.
Same-Morning Bitcoin Reserve Vote in Financial Services
The House Financial Services Committee contributed its own digital-asset milestone hours earlier, approving H.R. 8957, the American Reserve Modernization Act, 28-21. The bill codifies the administration’s Strategic Bitcoin Reserve with a 20-year lockup period and places custody under the Treasury Department rather than a private custodian. Together, the two markups represent the most concentrated legislative day for digital-asset policy of the session — one bill defining how crypto is taxed, the other defining how the federal government holds it.
Market Reaction and the Road Ahead
Markets read the news as mixed. Bitcoin slid to roughly $75,500 in late New York trade after the Federal Reserve delivered a 25-basis-point rate hike, and spot Bitcoin ETFs logged $450.33 million in net outflows on Tuesday. Ethereum ETFs shed $141.47 million on the same session. A full committee report on the Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act is expected within the next two weeks, after which leadership will decide whether to fold the package into a year-end tax vehicle or move it as a standalone measure. Representative Steven Horsford, the committee’s top Democrat, told reporters the vote was about more than revenue: “We are establishing basic tax rules for digital assets,” he said, “so that consumers, developers, and businesses know where they stand before they transact.” Smith was more sweeping, calling the bill the “first-ever tax framework for digital assets” and urging the Senate to take it up alongside the still-pending CLARITY reconsideration motion. With 22 working days left and a narrow floor calendar, the path for either bill remains narrow — but on September 16, Ways and Means moved further, faster, than any panel has on digital-asset tax policy to date. The House Tax Committee has now placed the Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act squarely in front of a chamber that, until this week, had nothing concrete to vote on.
Source: crypto.news, Sep 16 2026 (https://crypto.news/us-crypto-tax-bill-clears-house-committee-in-38-5-vote)