The House Ways and Means Committee voted 38-5 on September 16 to advance the Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act, sending the first comprehensive federal crypto tax framework to the full House. The vote came less than a day after the Senate failed to advance the broader CLARITY Act market structure bill. The bill, H.R. 10357, would rewrite parts of the Internal Revenue Code that apply to digital assets. It passed with heavy bipartisan support after more than a year of negotiation, a contrast with the Senate’s 49-50 procedural failure on the CLARITY Act the previous day.
What the bill changes
The legislation creates a de minimis exemption for small network and transaction fees. Payments under $10 would avoid gain or loss recognition, a change aimed at people who use crypto for everyday payments rather than trading. The exemption excludes service providers handling transactions on behalf of customers.It also establishes a voluntary disclosure program, to open within 12 months of enactment, letting eligible taxpayers amend previous returns and settle outstanding taxes, interest and penalties. Mining and staking rewards would be treated as ordinary income, closing an ambiguity that has left many miners and stakers guessing at their obligations.Qualifying dollar-pegged stablecoin transactions would get special accounting treatment, reducing the record-keeping burden for users who hold and spend stablecoins. Committee leaders called the vote a milestone, and the American Bankers Association backed the package after Chairman Jason Smith removed a staking and mining deferral provision that the group had opposed. ABA president Rob Nichols thanked the committee for the change, saying that “taxing similar income the same way, regardless of the asset that produces it, is a bedrock principle of a fair Tax Code.”
The politics around the vote
The timing was awkward for the industry. The CLARITY Act, the market structure bill that would divide oversight between the SEC and CFTC, fell short of the 60 votes needed for cloture in the Senate on September 15, its furthest progress yet. Bitcoin slid below $75,000 in the hours after the vote, roughly $300 million in leveraged long positions were liquidated, and bitcoin and ether ETFs lost a combined $592 million the same day, their deepest single-day outflow in months.Representative Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat and senior committee member, pushed back hard before the vote. “This committee remains the only place in Congress that’s rushing to provide favors to this industry,” he said, citing the Senate’s failure. “I’ve not had anyone come up to me and say, ‘You know what? This committee really ought to prioritize is new tax breaks and loopholes for the crypto industry.'” He argued the committee was responding to “moneyed interests with the strongest lobbyists and the biggest political action committees” while ignoring other priorities.Supporters of the bill framed it differently. They argue that clear tax rules reduce compliance costs for ordinary users and that the de minimis exemption brings US treatment closer to other jurisdictions that already exempt small transactions. The White House crypto council had pressed for tax clarity as part of a broader legislative push this year, and industry groups had lobbied for exactly this package through two Congresses.
Where legislation stands now
The two bills now sit on different tracks. The CLARITY Act passed the House in July 2025 but stalled in the Senate over disputes on stablecoin rewards, tokenized equities and ethics provisions involving the Trump family’s crypto interests. Senate Republicans added ethics and enforcement changes ahead of the vote, and White House crypto council director Patrick Witt publicly backed new limits on stablecoin rewards in the latest draft, including a Treasury “circuit breaker” that could restrict stablecoin yields if community banks lost deposits. The count still fell one vote short. Senator Cynthia Lummis blamed Democrats, saying they “chose politics over the American people,” while Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse called the outcome disappointing but stayed upbeat on US crypto policy.The tax bill now heads to the House floor, where a vote has not been scheduled. If it passes, it would still need Senate action, and the same coalition problems that sank the CLARITY Act vote could resurface. The SEC and CFTC have signaled they could move ahead with parts of crypto regulation through rulemaking even if Congress fails, but tax rules cannot be created that way, which makes the Ways and Means bill one of the few live paths to statutory clarity this session.
The market backdrop
Crypto markets were digesting several shocks at once this week. The Federal Reserve raised rates a quarter point on September 16, its first hike since 2023, and penciled in another before year end. The 10-year Treasury yield had touched 5.04 percent, its highest since 2007, and oil above $100 a barrel added inflation pressure. Bitcoin traded near $76,000 going into the decision and recovered to around $79,900 by Wednesday afternoon, helped by traders rotating out of AI-linked tech stocks after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for the industry to slow development over safety concerns.Spot bitcoin ETFs recorded $450 million of outflows on September 15 after a single day of inflows, with Fidelity’s FBTC losing $215 million and BlackRock’s IBIT $162 million. Fear and greed readings fell to 63, still in greed territory but down from the mid-70s earlier in the month. Against that backdrop, the House vote gave the sector at least one legislative win to point to, even as the bigger market structure question stays open.