House tax writers are reportedly preparing to review two digital-asset tax bills at a Sept. 16 markup, a session that could reshape how American miners, stakers and traders calculate their federal taxes. The House Ways and Means Committee is expected to consider the Mining and Staking Tax Clarity Act and a companion anti-abuse measure on Wednesday, though the committee’s public calendar had not posted an official markup notice as of Monday morning, leaving the meeting time and final bill list unconfirmed.
Two bills, two different problems
The two measures, introduced by Representatives Mike Carey and Jodey Arrington on June 8 and referred to Ways and Means per the Congressional Record, tackle separate corners of the tax code. H.R. 9175, the Tax Clarity for Mining and Staking Act, addresses when newly generated tokens become taxable income. H.R. 9172, the Applying Existing Tax Anti-Abuse Rules to Digital Assets Act, would extend existing wash-sale and constructive-sale restrictions to covered digital assets and related contracts.
One day after introduction, the committee held a legislative hearing covering the proposals alongside several other digital-asset tax measures, with witnesses from Fidelity, Coinbase, Coin Center and the NYU Tax Law Center. Committee Chairman Jason Smith framed the package as an effort to give taxpayers clearer rules, arguing the existing framework has not kept pace with new financial technology.
How the mining deferral would work
Under H.R. 9175’s default rule, a taxpayer would include a token’s fair market value in ordinary income at the moment of acquisition through mining, staking or another qualifying validation process. The recognized amount would become the taxpayer’s basis in the asset.
The bill’s headline feature is an election. Eligible taxpayers could postpone recognition for qualifying tokens received during the elected tax year, with the election continuing in later years unless Treasury approves its revocation. When an elected token is eventually sold or disposed of, the deferred gain would be recognized — and classified as arising from property that is not a capital asset, producing ordinary income treatment under the proposed language rather than capital gains rates.
The election would not be universal. The introduced text contains restrictions involving controlled foreign corporations, passive foreign investment companies and several foreign ownership structures, along with sourcing rules based partly on a taxpayer’s residence when the asset is acquired or disposed of. The nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation estimated the introduced bill would reduce federal revenue by 2.956 billion USD between fiscal years 2026 and 2036.
Reports of a Republican pullback
According to Wu Blockchain and subsequent reporting, Republican lawmakers have discussed removing the deferral election entirely or limiting it to five years. Neither option appears in the introduced text, and no official amendment confirming either change had been published as of Sept. 14. The reported Sept. 16 markup itself also remains provisional until the committee posts an agenda — its absence from the official calendar does not prove cancellation, but it means the schedule cannot yet be treated as fixed.
The wash-sale side of the package
H.R. 9172 takes aim at a long-standing asymmetry: securities are subject to wash-sale and constructive-sale rules that prevent investors from harvesting tax losses by selling and immediately repurchasing an asset, while digital assets have generally fallen outside those restrictions. The bill would extend the anti-abuse framework to covered digital assets and related contracts. It carves out targeted exceptions — qualified dollar stablecoins and certain validation-related acquisitions would not be swept into the restricted category.
For active traders, the change would be material. Tax-loss harvesting strategies that rely on the current gap in the rules would need to be rebuilt around the new restrictions if the bill advances in its introduced form, while stablecoin trading — where rapid round trips are routine payments behavior rather than loss harvesting — would be spared.
Why this week matters
A committee markup would allow lawmakers to debate, amend and vote on the legislation, the first formal step toward floor consideration. The timing is notable: the crypto policy spotlight this week is fixed on Tuesday’s Senate cloture vote on the CLARITY Act market-structure bill, but the Ways and Means session signals that tax treatment — arguably the more immediate pocketbook issue for miners and stakers — is moving in parallel.
The stakes are concrete. Current IRS guidance treats mining and staking rewards as ordinary income when taxpayers gain control of them, with later disposals generating a separate capital gain or loss. For miners receiving volatile tokens at creation, that means being taxed on income that can evaporate before it is sold — precisely the scenario H.R. 9175’s deferral election is designed to address.
Whether the election survives the markup, gets trimmed to five years, or disappears from the package entirely, Wednesday’s reported session will offer the clearest signal yet of where House Republicans intend to land on crypto tax policy heading into the fall legislative calendar.
deferring tax until you actually sell the mined coin is just logical. taxing the receipt and then the disposal double counts everything
The deferral bill makes sense but H.R. 9172 is the sleeper. Extending wash-sale rules to crypto kills the harvest losses and rebuy in thirty seconds playbook
harvest and rebuy in thirty seconds was always living on borrowed time. the second institutional money showed up via ETFs this was inevitable
the valuation question is still a nightmare tho. what price do you even use for the receipt when the spread on a freshly mined block is all over the place
Carey and Arrington introduced these back in June and we are only now getting a markup. Slow, but for crypto tax clarity I will take it
deferring tax until you actually sell mined coins is how it should have worked from day one. taxing tokens at creation when they may be worthless by filing season is nuts
read the fine print tho. deferred tokens get ordinary income treatment on disposal instead of cap gains. you postpone the bill and pay a higher rate for it
the anti-abuse bill existing alongside the clarity one is Congress in a nutshell. one step forward for miners, one new rule for traders
markup unconfirmed on the public calendar per the article. hoping Wednesday is real but i have watched too many of these slip a week
Fidelity, Coinbase and Coin Center all at the same hearing as the NYU Tax Law Center is a decent sign. usually these markups hear one side only