The House Ways and Means Committee circulated seven draft bills ahead of this week’s hearing on crypto tax policy, signaling what the industry can expect.
You’re reading State of Crypto, a CoinDesk newsletter looking at the intersection of cryptocurrency and government. Click here to sign up for future editions.
The narrative
The House Ways and Means Committee is the group of lawmakers tasked with writing laws governing taxes. While we’ve seen draft bills addressing taxes already, it’s this committee that’s really going to handle a hefty part of the work of drafting crypto tax legislation and shepherding it through the legislative process.
Why it matters
The fact that the committee is at the point of discussing draft legislation in a hearing shows progress on this front, and it’s likely the provisions will eventually become law in the coming years, whether as part of a tax-specific legislative package or as part of some other, broader bill.
Breaking it down
Staking and mining, de minimis and stablecoin transactions are all covered in the draft bills circulated late Thursday by the House Ways and Means Committee, among various other issues.
It’s unclear how much progress will be made in terms of actually turning these bills into law in the 2026 calendar year. The House — and Senate, for that matter — has a number of other priorities that are more advanced and require floor time, as CoinDesk has covered before. Still, the existence of the draft bills and a hearing are important steps.
Alison Mangiero, the head of industry affairs and U.S. policy at the Crypto Council for Innovation, an industry trade group, said in a statement that the group of bills was an “important first step.”
“The Ways & Means Committee’s decision to release seven bills and follow with a full committee legislative hearing on June 9 is significant on procedural grounds alone,” she said. “This format, where members work through specific legislation with expert witnesses before any markup, is one the Committee has not used in years. That kind of deliberate, structured engagement represents the unique focus from the Committee on this important work.”
Mangiero called the bills the third leg in the metaphorical three-legged stool of crypto legislation, with the other legs including the stablecoin-focused GENIUS Act and the market structure-focused Clarity Act (the latter of which, as we all know, is still elbow-deep in the legislative process).
“Several provisions in this package reflect priorities we have long advanced: sensible tax treatment for GENIUS-compliant stablecoins that allows them to function as the payments instruments they are; a de minimis exception for routine network transaction fees, a relief we have long advocated for, and believe should be further broadened as the process continues; parity provisions extending securities lending, mark-to-market, and charitable deduction treatment to widely traded digital assets; and clear rules for the taxation of mining and staking rewards,” she said.
In semi-related news, the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s Investor Advisory Committee also met late last month to discuss, among other issues, whether stablecoins qualify to be treated as cash equivalents.
The committee believes there needs to be a “high threshold” to establish something as a cash equivalent, according to a summary of the meeting shared with CoinDesk. The members of the committee did not come to a consensus about what kind of information would be useful for investors.
Possible disclosure information includes how reserves are structured, the type of stablecoin, who the issuer is, where funds are held, disaggregated information about cash equivalents and currency risk and even whether disclosed information was made on an interim basis.
The committee will meet again in November.
Tuesday
- 18:00 UTC (2:00 p.m. ET): The House Ways and Means Committee will hold a hearing to discuss crypto tax policy.
If you’ve got thoughts or questions on what I should discuss next week or any other feedback you’d like to share, feel free to email me at nik@coindesk.com or find me on Bluesky @nikhileshde.bsky.social.
You can also join the group conversation on Telegram.
See ya’ll next week!