THE WASH SALE RULE REACHES BITCOIN — STABLECOINS ARE EXEMPT
House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith released a 114-page crypto tax bill Monday night. The Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act, H.R. 10357, goes to markup Wednesday at 10 a.m.
It does two things that should be read next to each other.
It applies wash-sale and constructive-sale rules to digital assets for the first time. Sell bitcoin at a loss, buy it back inside the window, and the loss stops counting. That is scored at $2.074 billion of revenue over 2026 to 2036.
Qualified dollar stablecoins are excluded from the rule.
The relief runs the other way. Network and transaction fees under $10 stop being taxable, which is the fix operators have asked for for years. But it does not apply to anyone who made more than 5,000 transfers in the prior year. The people who pay the most network fees are the ones the exemption is written to exclude.
The part that would matter most to miners is not in this bill at all. H.R. 9175 would let miners and stakers defer income on newly created tokens until they sell them, instead of owing tax the day a coin appears. It scores as a cost of $2.956 billion. Reporting Monday said Ways and Means Republicans were strongly considering removing the mining and staking timing provisions, with a five-year cap among the options on the table.
Put the two figures side by side. The bill raises $2.074 billion by applying a stock rule to bitcoin. The $2.956 billion that would go back to the people who run the network is the line they are thinking about cutting.
Markup is Wednesday morning.