Introduced on September 14, 2026, by committee chairman Jason Smith and referred to Ways and Means, the bill runs to 114 pages in its introduced form. It is a proposal, not enacted law, and its provisions take effect only if it passes both chambers and is signed.
The House Ways and Means Committee has released a crypto tax bill, H.R. 10357, the Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act, a 114-page measure covering Bitcoin mining and staking, wash sales, and network transaction fees, with a full committee markup scheduled ahead of any vote.
Introduced on September 14, 2026, by committee chairman Jason Smith and referred to Ways and Means, the bill runs to 114 pages in its introduced form. It is a proposal, not enacted law, and its provisions take effect only if it passes both chambers and is signed. For related coverage, see U.S. House to Hold Crypto Clarity Act Hearing This Friday.
For Bitcoin holders, the measure matters most where it touches mining, proof-of-work rewards, and the small on-chain fees paid to move coins. Each of these sits close to the network fundamentals that determine how Bitcoin is produced and transferred, which is why the committee’s framing of tax character and timing carries weight beyond the tax code itself. For related coverage, see House Ways and Means Sets Sept. 16 Crypto Tax Rules Markup.
Mining in the House crypto tax bill
Mining is one of three topics the committee named in releasing the bill, and Title IV addresses how validation activity is taxed. Section 401 would treat income from digital asset validation supporting activities, the category that covers Bitcoin mining and staking rewards, as ordinary income, with sourcing generally based on the recipient’s residence and exceptions for branches.
That character-and-sourcing rule would apply to taxable years beginning after enactment, per the introduced text. The committee’s approach ties the tax result to where the miner or staker resides rather than to where the underlying network operates.
Section 402 would preserve trust classification despite specified staking powers, protecting certain staking arrangements from losing their trust status. The provision excludes any entity actively conducting a digital-asset transaction-validation business, so an operating mining or validation company would not qualify. This mirrors the committee’s broader effort to separate passive holders from professional operators, an approach that recurs across the bill.
Wash sales and transaction fees in the bill
Section 301 extends the wash-sale rules of Internal Revenue Code section 1091 to traded digital assets, a change that would end the current practice of harvesting losses and immediately repurchasing the same coin. The provision generally excludes qualified U.S. dollar stablecoins, subject to a non-dollar functional-currency exception, and it does not count acquisitions tied to transaction validation or regular periodic acquisitions booked as ordinary income toward the wash-sale acquisition test.
The Joint Committee on Taxation, in its one-page description dated September 15, 2026, states that the chairman’s substitute changes the section 301 effective date to dispositions after September 14, 2026. That is a proposed effective date conditional on enactment, not a statement that the rule already applies. A separate transition lets brokers determine customer adjusted basis without section 1091 for section 6045 reporting on qualifying dispositions before January 1, 2028, which does not postpone the substantive wash-sale date.
On fees, Section 101 proposes no gain or loss recognition when digital assets pay qualifying network or transaction fees, provided the aggregate amount does not exceed $10 per relevant validation or underlying transfer. This is a fee exception, not a general exemption for retail crypto purchases.
For non-network transaction fees, the asset used to pay the fee must be the same type as the asset disposed of or acquired in the underlying transfer. A Bitcoin user paying a fee in a different token would not qualify, a nuance that the committee’s small-transaction relief effort makes central to eligibility, and one that echoes the small transaction relief weighed across the committee’s tax package. Brokerage, trading, liquidity, and similar fees are covered subject to the conditions.
The fee exception is not universal. It generally excludes traders, brokers, dealers, validation-batching businesses, and any person with more than 5,000 prior-year digital-asset transfers, though transfers made to pay fees do not count toward that threshold.
Treasury administrative-convenience relief and accounting-method exclusions also apply. If enacted, the fee exception would apply to asset dispositions after December 31, 2027, the latest of the bill’s staggered start dates. That timing puts the fee relief well behind the proposed wash-sale date and behind the broker-reporting transition.
What remains unclear about the crypto tax bill
The committee announcement schedules H.R. 10357 for a full committee markup on Wednesday, September 16, 2026, at 10:00 AM ET in HVC-210. A scheduled markup is a working session to amend and advance a bill; it is not passage, and the release and markup together do not establish enactment. The committee’s plan to review the measure was set out in its September 16 markup agenda, part of a wider crypto tax overhaul spanning several bills.
Much of the operative detail lives in the chairman’s substitute rather than the introduced text, and the JCT description covers only selected changes such as the wash-sale effective date. The precise interaction of the substitute with the introduced provisions, and any amendments adopted at markup, would need verification against the final approved text before any provision can be treated as settled.
The proposed effective dates are conditional on enactment: after December 31, 2027, for fee relief; after September 14, 2026, for wash sales; and before January 1, 2028, for the separate broker-reporting transition. None of these dates binds taxpayers unless the bill becomes law, and the legislative next steps beyond Wednesday’s markup remain to be scheduled.
Bitcoin traded around $75,614 in the retrieved market snapshot, down 3.4% over 24 hours, a move that reflects broad conditions rather than any reaction to the bill. The tax character assigned to mining and staking rewards will ultimately matter more to the economics of validation than any single session’s price, because it feeds directly into the after-tax return on the hashrate securing the network and on the difficulty adjustments that keep block production near its ten-minute target.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Cryptocurrency and digital asset markets carry significant risk. Always do your own research before making decisions.
