US House Crypto Tax Package Drops Mining, Staking Deferral Provision

The US House Ways and Means Committee is set to consider a 114-page crypto tax package on Wednesday that notably excludes a provision allowing miners and stakers to defer taxation of rewards until tokens are sold. Published alongside the committee's markup notice on Monday, the Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act (H.R. 10357) leaves out the reward-timing language from Representative Mike Carey's standalone Tax Clarity for Mining and Staking Act, introduced in June. Without that provision, mining and staking rewards remain taxable at the moment they are received or fall under the recipient's control, often before they can be liquidated.

Despite the omission, the package retains several crypto-relevant provisions. It classifies income from blockchain validator activities as ordinary income, clarifies whether such income is sourced inside or outside the United States, and permits qualifying investment trusts to stake digital assets without jeopardizing their trust status. The bill also blocks taxpayers from recognizing gains or losses when crypto is used to pay network or transaction fees of up to $10, proposes special tax treatment for qualifying US dollar stablecoins, and exempts qualifying digital asset loans from being treated as taxable sales. Additional measures extend wash-sale and constructive-sale rules to digital assets and establish a voluntary disclosure program for taxpayers seeking to correct prior crypto tax violations.

The House markup arrives as the Senate weighs whether to advance the CLARITY Act, which would determine how the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission divide oversight of the US crypto market. The committee had circulated seven crypto tax draft proposals in June covering stablecoins, mining, staking, and reporting burden reduction, prompting the Blockchain Association, Crypto Council for Innovation, and Digital Chamber to push Congress to pass Carey's standalone legislation. That lobbying effort has not yet resulted in inclusion of the deferral provision in the broader package heading to Wednesday's markup.