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The Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act, H.R. 10357, has cleared the House Ways and Means Committee 38-5, and the bipartisan margin should embarrass a Senate that just failed a procedural vote on market-structure rules. The September 16 markup moves the first proposed federal tax framework for digital assets toward the full House, one day after the CLARITY Act's cloture failure, and the contrast is instructive: tax writing is apparently where Washington still does crypto business.
What the Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act Actually Contains
Committee Chair Jason Smith called the vote a historic first for the tax-writing panel, after more than a year of bipartisan work to place digital assets clearly inside the Internal Revenue Code. The bill's centerpiece is a targeted exception: taxpayers would not recognize a gain or loss when using digital assets to pay qualifying network or transaction fees of up to $10, which currently triggers a taxable disposal every time a user pays a gas fee or brokerage cost in tokens. The exclusion excludes certain traders, brokers, dealers, validators and anyone conducting more than 5,000 digital asset transfers in the prior tax year.
The rest of the framework is denser. Simplified accounting methods for widely traded assets. Specific treatment for qualifying US dollar stablecoin transactions, with some stablecoin lending arrangements treated as debt. Rules for digital asset lending, dealers, traders, a trading safe harbor, and charitable contributions. Mining and staking get source and character-of-income rules plus provisions for staking investment trusts. Anti-abuse sections extend wash-sale and constructive-sale rules to traded digital assets, closing the loss-harvesting loophole crypto traders have legally used since the IRS classified tokens as property. A voluntary disclosure program lets taxpayers correct past reporting failures, and Treasury must study the framework and report, adding tax to the pile of crypto rulemaking that continues moving while Congress negotiates.
The Numbers Behind the Vote
The Joint Committee on Taxation scored it: the full bill raises a net $500 million from fiscal 2027 through 2036, composed of roughly $1.71 billion from the wash-sale provision, minus roughly $2.37 billion forgone from the small-fee exemption. Read that split carefully, because it contains the politics. The wash-sale change raises real money from sophisticated traders; the fee exemption costs money for ordinary users' convenience. Congress is monetizing the loophole while subsidizing the plumbing.
The bill also carries the FULL HOUSE Act, restoring the deduction for gambling losses up to the amount of winnings, reversing a change that capped the deduction at 90% and left some taxpayers owing tax on breakeven or losing results. Its presence in a crypto tax bill is not random: prediction markets and sports event contracts have grown into an industry where gambling-tax mechanics collide with digital-asset reporting, and Congress is quietly harmonizing the two. A substitute amendment set September 14, 2026 as the reference date for several provisions, including wash sales, constructive sales, foreign entities and registration-covered assets.
From Committee to Floor, and the Real Obstacles
A 38-5 committee vote is a strong signal but not a law. The bill now needs a full House vote, and both chambers must pass identical text before anything reaches the president's desk. The House path looks plausible given the margin. The Senate is the graveyard, and everyone who followed the macro-loaded week that upended crypto positioning knows it: the same chamber that rejected cloture on market structure, with its limited calendar before the November midterms, must also find floor time for a tax bill whose details, wash-sale tightening in particular, will draw lobbying from traders who liked the loophole.
The contrast with CLARITY matters for how the industry should read Washington. Market structure died on contested questions of agency power, presidential conflicts and DeFi protections. Tax, by comparison, is a compliance-cost story where both parties can claim wins: Republicans get certainty and the gambling-loss fix, Democrats get anti-abuse revenue. That is why the tax bill advanced 38-5 the day after market structure stalled 11 votes short of cloture.
What American Taxpayers Should Watch
Nothing changes yet. The IRS currently treats digital assets as property, meaning every sale, exchange or payment can create a capital gain or loss, and broker reporting through Form 1099-DA has expanded the transaction data the IRS receives. If H.R. 10357 passes, the practical changes are: no more taxable events on sub-$10 fees, loss harvesting under wash-sale rules ends for covered assets, stablecoin transactions get defined treatment, and mining and staking income gets codified source rules. Watch the House floor schedule for a vote window, watch which amendments attach, and watch whether the staking and mining provisions survive untouched, because those sections define the tax status of yield-bearing activity that millions of Americans already perform. The first-ever digital asset tax framework is one committee vote old. The distance between a 38-5 markup and a signed law is where crypto bills usually die, but this one starts with the strongest committee margin any crypto legislation has had.
