House Tax Bill Would Reshape USDT Tax, USDC Tax, and Crypto Staking Tax Rules

A 114-page bill that could fundamentally change how Americans calculate crypto taxes landed in Congress on Monday. The House Ways and Means Committee released the Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act ahead of a scheduled Wednesday markup, and its provisions cover ground that crypto holders have been waiting years for Washington to address: USDT tax and USDC tax treatment, crypto staking tax rules, wash-sale reform, and a new voluntary disclosure program. Nothing is law yet, but the bill's scope means every US holder should understand what's on the table right now.

What the Bill Actually Contains

Committee Chair Jason Smith introduced the legislation, which pulls together several proposals that had been circulating separately. Think of it as a consolidation effort rather than a surprise. A June hearing previewed many of these ideas, so industry participants have had some notice. That said, seeing the full 114-page text ahead of a markup sharpens the stakes considerably.

The De Minimis Fee Exception

One of the more consumer-friendly provisions creates a de minimis exception for qualifying network or transaction fees paid in crypto. Under current rules, paying any fee in a digital asset is technically a disposal, meaning you'd need to record a gain or loss on the crypto you spent. The bill would eliminate that obligation when the fee is $10 or less. This won't help anyone paying large gas fees on complex DeFi transactions, but it would remove a genuine compliance headache for everyday on-chain activity. The provision would take effect in 2028 if enacted as written.

Stablecoin Tax Treatment

This is arguably the most practically significant change for a broad swathe of holders. The bill addresses situations where a qualifying US dollar stablecoin, think USDT or USDC, deviates slightly from its $1 peg. Under the proposal, the redemption value of such a stablecoin would generally be treated as the tax basis, provided it was acquired close enough to that value. In plain terms: if you buy a stablecoin for $1, hold it, and redeem it for $1, the bill intends for there to be no taxable gain, even if the price briefly wobbled to $0.9995 in between.

For anyone whose USDT tax or USDC tax position is currently murky because of tiny peg deviations recorded across hundreds of transactions, this is potentially a significant simplification. You'd still need to verify that your stablecoin qualifies under whatever definition Treasury finalises, but the directional intent is clear. To understand how broker reporting for these assets is already evolving, see our explainer on how covered and noncovered broker rules affect your USDT and USDC tax.

Simplified Annual Accounting Option

The bill would also let taxpayers elect simplified annual accounting for widely traded digital assets. This is separate from the stablecoin provision and applies more broadly. Rather than tracking every individual lot and its precise acquisition date, eligible holders could use an approved simplified method. Like the fee exception, this would start in 2028. The exact mechanics will depend on Treasury guidance, but the intent is to reduce the per-transaction recordkeeping burden that makes it so difficult to calculate crypto taxes today.

Crypto Staking Tax: What the Bill Says

Mining and staking get their own dedicated section, and the headline treatment is probably not a surprise to most holders: income from both activities would be taxed as ordinary income. That aligns with existing IRS guidance and the general direction of most legislative proposals. If you receive staking rewards, they'd be income at the fair market value on the date of receipt, and that value becomes your cost basis when you eventually sell.

The Trust Carve-Out for Staking

There's a notable carve-out for certain investment trusts. Under the bill, a qualifying trust could stake its holdings without that activity alone affecting its tax status. This matters for fund structures and pooled investment vehicles that hold digital assets. If staking disqualified a trust's tax treatment, managers would face an impossible choice between generating yield for investors and maintaining the entity's tax-efficient structure. The bill resolves that tension, at least in principle.

What Didn't Make the Cut: Income Deferral

An earlier mining and staking bill included an option to defer income recognition on certain newly minted digital assets, essentially letting you wait until you sell before paying tax on the tokens you created. That option is absent from this bill. Whether it was dropped intentionally or left for a future amendment is unclear from the text, but holders who were banking on a deferral mechanism will need to keep working under current rules, which tax newly minted tokens as income on receipt. For a deeper look at how staking income interacts with existing reporting frameworks, see our piece on what the 1099-DA means for staking and DeFi holders.

Wash-Sale Rules Extended to Crypto

This is the provision that loss-harvesters will feel most acutely. The bill would extend wash-sale rules to traded digital assets. Under the wash-sale rule as it applies to securities, you can't claim a loss on a sale if you buy the same or a substantially identical asset within 30 days before or after that sale. Crypto has sat outside this rule for years, which is why tax-loss harvesting strategies specific to digital assets have been so widely used.

How the 30-Day Window Would Work

The logic is straightforward: sell Bitcoin at a loss on a given day, and if you buy it back within 30 days in either direction, that loss gets disallowed. The disallowed loss isn't gone forever; it typically gets added to the basis of the replacement asset, so you'll recover it eventually. But it eliminates the ability to lock in a tax loss while maintaining continuous exposure, which is a core feature of many current crypto tax strategies.

It's worth noting that the bill covers "substantially identical" assets as well, not just the exact same token. How Treasury defines that term for crypto will matter enormously. A Bitcoin spot ETF and Bitcoin itself could potentially be considered substantially identical, for example, though that determination would require regulatory guidance.

Crypto Lending Transfers and Voluntary Disclosure

Lending Agreement Transfers

The bill specifies that qualifying transfers of traded digital assets under lending agreements wouldn't be treated as sales or exchanges. This has practical implications for anyone using crypto in lending protocols or participating in institutional lending arrangements. Without this clarification, lending your crypto could trigger a taxable disposal every time you transfer it to a counterparty, which would make crypto lending economically unworkable from a tax perspective for many participants.

The Voluntary Disclosure Program

Perhaps the most consequential provision for anyone with messy prior-year crypto records is the requirement for Treasury to establish a Digital Asset Voluntary Disclosure Program within 12 months of enactment. Taxpayers who qualify could amend earlier returns and settle tax, interest, and applicable penalties owed. Voluntary disclosure programs are a well-established mechanism in tax administration: they let people come clean on unreported income in exchange for a more structured resolution than an audit or enforcement action would typically produce.

The bill doesn't specify the penalty reduction terms, those would be left to Treasury, but the existence of a formal program would create a defined pathway for holders who have years of untracked transactions and don't know where to start. If this provision becomes law, getting your historical crypto tax report in order before the program opens would put you in the strongest possible position to use it.

Timeline and What Happens Next

The Wednesday markup is the next formal step. A markup is the committee-level process where members debate amendments and vote on whether to advance the bill to the full House. Passage at markup doesn't guarantee the bill reaches the floor, and even floor passage wouldn't make it law without Senate action and a presidential signature. Legislative timelines in this area have repeatedly slipped.

That said, the fact that this bill consolidates multiple prior proposals and has the backing of the committee chair signals genuine momentum. The most practically important dates in the bill itself are 2028 effective dates on the fee exception and simplified accounting option, which gives some planning runway even if the bill passes relatively quickly. Wash-sale changes, stablecoin treatment, and the voluntary disclosure program would take effect on different schedules depending on final text.

US holders should treat this bill as a strong signal of where federal crypto tax law is heading, even if the exact provisions shift before final enactment. The core direction: stablecoins get clearer treatment, staking rewards stay as ordinary income, and the informal tax advantages of crypto's wash-sale exclusion are almost certainly going away.

Source: The Block