Congress Crypto Tax Bill Targets Small Fees, Wash Sales and Mining Rules

September 15, 2026

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#Wash-Sale Rules #Form 1099-DA #Mining And Staking #Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act

Congress Crypto Tax Bill Targets Small Fees, Wash Sales and Mining Rules

Congress is trying to put some actual tax rules around crypto, and for once the result is not just more noise. Small on-chain fees may get a little relief, while wash-sale and constructive-sale rules would get a much firmer grip on digital assets.

Small-fee relief: some network and transaction fees under $10 could be exempt
Tighter anti-abuse rules: wash-sale and constructive-sale rules would extend to digital assets
Big unresolved fight: mining and staking tax timing is still the main battleground
More reporting: IRS broker rules are already closing in

The House Ways and Means Committee has released a 114-page crypto tax package called the House crypto tax bill offers $10 fee exemption, tightens Proposed Legislation to Modernize Digital Asset Taxation, with markup on H.R. 10357 scheduled for Sept. 16 according to committee materials and Bloomberg Government reporting. The package pulls together several digital asset tax measures and could reshape how Americans handle everything from small payments and transfer fees to trading losses, mining rewards and staking income.

Classic Washington move: offer a bit of relief for ordinary users, then tighten the screws on anyone who thought crypto was a tax loophole with a blockchain attached. Congress rarely misses a chance to be both helpful and irritating at the same time.

What is actually in the package?

According to House Ways and Means, the package covers:

small crypto transactions
gain and loss calculations
transfers
wash sales
mining and staking
broker requirements

The committee’s release also says the package incorporates earlier Republican proposals and bipartisan work from Reps. Steven Horsford, D-Nev., and Max Miller, R-Ohio.

That matters because the bill is not a single narrow fix. It is a bundle of overlapping ideas trying to drag tax law into a world where money moves at internet speed, ownership can be split across wallets, and “sale” is sometimes just a fancy word for “clicked the wrong button.”

The $10 fee exemption: small relief, not a free pass

One of the most practical changes would exempt certain network and transaction fees worth less than $10 from tax. In plain English, that means some small blockchain fees would not force users to calculate tiny gains or losses just to move money around.

That is not nothing. Crypto users routinely deal with small fees for transfers, swaps and on-chain activity, and the current system can turn those into annoying tax events. If you have ever had to track a fraction-of-a-cent gain just to send tokens, you already know this hobby can become a paperwork swamp fast.

There is a catch, though: the exemption would not apply to users who completed more than 5, 000 transfers during the previous year. The way that threshold is applied will matter a lot. If Congress wants to help normal users without giving high-volume actors a clean tax dodge, the language needs to be precise. Otherwise, this kind of carveout becomes a fight over definitions instead of a win for anyone.

Wash sales and constructive sales: the crackdown side

The tougher part of the package would extend Wash sale and constructive-sale rules to digital assets.

Wash-sale rules stop investors from selling an asset at a loss and buying back a substantially identical one right away just to claim the tax loss. Traditional stock investors already live with that rule. Crypto traders have had more room to maneuver because digital assets have not been clearly covered in the same way under existing law.

Constructive-sale rules are another anti-abuse tool. They can treat a position as sold for tax purposes even when no literal sale happened, if the taxpayer has effectively locked in the economics of the position. In other words, Congress is trying to stop the “technically I didn’t sell it” routine before it becomes a permanent feature of crypto tax planning.

The package would also exclude qualified U.S. dollar stablecoins from the wash-sale provision, according to the materials cited in the committee package. That distinction matters because stablecoins are usually used as market plumbing, not as speculative moon-chasing assets.

For readers newer to the space, stablecoins are tokens designed to hold a steady value, usually tied to the U.S. dollar. They are widely used for trading, payments and moving capital between exchanges without the usual volatility circus.

The biggest fight: mining and staking

The unresolved question is how to tax mining and staking rewards.

Mining secures proof-of-work networks like Bitcoin. Staking helps validate transactions on proof-of-stake networks. Both can produce newly created rewards, and that creates a brutal tax problem: should someone owe income tax the moment a reward hits their wallet, even if they have not sold it yet?

The package includes H.R. 9175, the Tax Clarity for Mining and Staking Act, which would defer taxation on newly created rewards until sale. That would ease cash-flow pressure for miners and stakers who may receive tokens before they have any liquid cash to pay the IRS. Taxing unsold rewards can be rough when the market is whipping around and the bill arrives before the coin has even had time to settle.

But this is still the most politically fragile piece. Punchbowl News reported on Sept. 13 that Ways and Means Republicans were strongly considering removing the mining and staking tax-timing provisions. In other words, the measure is in the package, but it may not survive markup in its current form.

Three crypto industry groups, Blockchain Association, Crypto Council for Innovation and The Digital Chamber, urged Congress in June to keep mining and staking tax timing unchanged. They opposed a five-year cap and pushed lawmakers to pass H.R. 9175 without changes.

The industry case is straightforward: if rewards are taxed before sale, taxpayers can end up owing money on assets they have not liquidated. Critics, though, will see deferral as special treatment dressed up as fairness. That debate is not going away, because it cuts right to the heart of whether crypto is being integrated into normal tax law or quietly given its own ruleset.

Why the IRS backdrop matters

This committee fight is happening while the IRS is already tightening digital asset reporting.

Under current U.S. tax law, digital assets are generally treated as property. That means sales, swaps and even some payments can trigger capital gains or losses. If you spend crypto, the tax system does not always care that you thought you were just buying coffee. It cares that you disposed of property.

The IRS also requires detailed tracking that can get ugly fast. The agency’s current framework includes wallet-by-wallet basis tracking, which is about as user-friendly as organizing a hardware wallet recovery phrase on a napkin.

Broker reporting is also rolling out. According to IRS guidance, brokers began reporting gross proceeds on Regulations on Broker Reporting for Digital Asset for the 2025 tax year, and cost-basis reporting is being phased in for transactions during 2026.

Gross proceeds means the total amount received from a sale before deductions. Cost basis is the amount used to calculate gain or loss later. Put those together and the IRS gets a much sharper picture of what taxpayers are doing, whether they like it or not.

That makes the policy fight bigger than just one bill. Congress is not only deciding what should be taxable; it is also deciding how much friction normal users should bear just for using crypto in everyday life.

What Coinbase and other witnesses argued

At a June 9 Ways and Means hearing, Coinbase Vice President of Tax Lawrence Zlatkin said calculating gains and losses on routine stablecoin payments and blockchain fees creates significant compliance work.

Coinbase has pushed for tax relief for stablecoin spending and small crypto transactions, while also backing delayed taxation of mining and staking rewards. That position is easy to understand. If stablecoins are being used as digital dollars, taxing every tiny payment like a securities trade is bureaucratic overkill.

The committee’s own framing was more about modernization. Jason Smith, the Missouri Republican who chairs Ways and Means, said the June work was aimed at giving taxpayers “clearer rules for digital assets, ” arguing that existing tax policy has not kept pace with financial technology.

He is right about one thing: the tax code was written for a much slower financial system. The downside is that once Congress starts “clarifying” crypto taxes, the result can be more reporting, more definitions and more paperwork, not necessarily more sanity.

Who wins, who loses?

For ordinary users, the $10 fee exemption could reduce some of the nonsense around small transfers and payments. That is real progress, even if it is narrow.

For traders, the wash-sale and constructive-sale changes are the bigger deal. These provisions would cut off tax strategies that crypto has long allowed but stock investors do not get. Some will call that fairness. Others will call it Congress finally noticing the party was still going on after the lights came on.

For miners and stakers, the unresolved timing issue is the make-or-break question. Immediate taxation can create cash-flow problems and discourage participation. Deferral could fix that mismatch, but it could also be attacked as a handout if lawmakers think the rules go too far.

For the IRS, the direction is obvious: more data, more reporting, more enforcement power. The agency is moving toward a system where brokers tell it more, taxpayers have fewer places to hide sloppiness, and the “I forgot” defense gets a lot less useful.

What happens next?

The House Ways and Means Committee is set to take up the package in markup, and the mining-and-staking fight will likely determine how much of the bill survives intact. If lawmakers strip out those provisions, the rest could still move as a narrower compliance and anti-abuse package. If they keep them, the bill becomes much more meaningful, and much more politically exposed.

At the same time, the Senate is moving on the separate CLARITY Act, which shows Congress is trying to address crypto from multiple angles, market structure on one track, tax rules on another. That is progress, but it is also very Washington. Split the problem into different rooms, then act surprised when the rooms keep talking over each other.

The broader message is simple. Crypto is no longer in the tax gray zone it once enjoyed. The government wants its forms, its records and its cut. The real question is whether lawmakers can make the system more rational for normal users without turning the whole thing into a heavier, meaner compliance machine.

Key takeaways

Will small crypto users get any tax relief?
Yes, some network and transaction fees under $10 could be exempt. But the relief would not apply to users who completed more than 5, 000 transfers in the previous year.
Are wash-sale rules coming to crypto?
Yes. The package would extend wash-sale and constructive-sale rules to digital assets, while excluding qualified U.S. dollar stablecoins from the wash-sale provision.
Is mining and staking tax treatment settled?
No. That is still the biggest unresolved issue, and lawmakers are still weighing whether to keep or remove the proposed deferral for newly created rewards.
Why does Form 1099-DA matter?
It means brokers will report digital asset activity directly to the IRS. Gross proceeds reporting starts with the 2025 tax year, and cost-basis reporting begins for transactions during 2026.
What is the big policy tradeoff?
Congress is trying to make crypto taxes more sensible for everyday use while also closing off abuse. Whether it succeeds depends on how much complexity it creates in the name of clarity.