The crypto tax bill's loss rule starts from the day it was filed and its reliefs start in 2028

What happened

Jason Smith of Missouri, chair of the House Committee on Ways and Means, introduced H.R. 10357, the Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act, on 14 September 2026, and the committee noticed it the same evening for markup at 10 a.m. on 16 September in HVC-210, alongside six unrelated bills. Eight other members are on it: Jodey Arrington of Texas, Aaron Bean of Florida, Mike Carey of Ohio, Steven Horsford of Nevada, Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania, David Kustoff of Tennessee, Max Miller of Ohio and Rudy Yakym of Indiana. Checked against the House clerk's own member data of 2 September, that is eight Republicans and one Democrat, Horsford. The committee published two prints and both were read here. The first, a 114 page discussion print whose text still reads 'H. R. ll' with a blank referral line, carries an internal timestamp of 'September 14, 2026 (2:29 p.m.)' and was uploaded to the committee's server at 23:55 GMT on 14 September. The second is the Government Publishing Office's introduced print, created at 02:51 on 15 September and uploaded at 12:46 GMT this morning; it carries the bill number, the date of introduction and the referral to Ways and Means. The two are the same 114 pages across seven titles. The commencement dates do not move together. Section 301, which rewrites section 1091 to extend the wash sale rule from 'stock or securities' to 'specified assets', applies 'to dispositions after the date of the introduction of this Act'. Section 203's digital asset trading safe harbour and Title VII's reinstatement of the ordinary rules for wagering losses both apply to taxable years beginning after 31 December 2025. Section 103's par rule for dollar stablecoins applies to taxable years beginning after 31 December 2026. Section 101's $10 de minimis fee exception applies to dispositions after 31 December 2027, and section 102's simplified accounting election to taxable years beginning after the same date. Four provisions carry the economics. New section 1091(g)(3) treats 'a tokenized digital asset (and a wrapped digital asset with respect to which the reference digital asset is a traded digital asset)' as 'substantially identical to any stock, security, or traded digital asset' where it is economically equivalent to it. New section 1063 sets the basis of a 'qualified U.S. dollar stablecoin' at its redemption value, with bands of 99.5 and 100.5 per cent of that value and 100 per cent for related parties, and section 7701(p)(7)(A) defines the term by the issuer's licence: a permitted payment stablecoin issuer under section 2(23) of the GENIUS Act, or a foreign payment stablecoin issuer registered with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Both Title I reliefs are capped by activity, at more than 5,000 transfers in the preceding year under section 1044(f)(1)(A)(iv) and more than 5,000 qualifying stablecoin transactions under section 1063(c)(1)(C), with business acceptance at par and sales at or below par excluded from the count. And section 402 provides that an arrangement 'shall not fail to be treated as a trust for purposes of this title solely by reason of the power of the trustee' to stake assets it holds, to retain or distribute what staking produces, to choose which assets to stake, or to borrow to fund redemptions, unless it is in the active conduct of a validating trade or business. Section 401 sources mining and staking income to the taxpayer's residence and, in new section 1261, makes it ordinary income. There is no deferral: the reward-timing choice in Mike Carey's Tax Clarity for Mining and Staking Act, which Cointelegraph reports the Blockchain Association, the Crypto Council for Innovation and the Digital Chamber had urged Congress to pass as introduced, is not in this bill, and Carey is one of its sponsors. Section 502 directs the Secretary to establish a Digital Asset Voluntary Disclosure Program within twelve months, under which an eligible taxpayer who files amended returns and pays the deficiency and a penalty escapes further penalties and, for an uncertified taxpayer, criminal referral for the disclosed violations. The penalty is a discount that decays: 25 per cent of a deficiency up to $25,000 a year and 40 per cent above it, rising to 40 and 50 per cent for returns filed more than twelve months after the programme opens, and 0 and 5 per cent for a certified eligible taxpayer, rising to 5 and 10.

Why it matters

The pattern in the commencement dates is that the rule which costs taxpayers money is already running and the rules that save them money are not. A holder who sold a token at a loss on 15 September and bought it back has to know what section 301 does, because it applies to dispositions after the date of introduction and the bill was introduced the day before. A holder waiting for the $10 fee exception waits until 2028. That is a defensible way to draft an anti-abuse rule, since a long runway invites the loss harvesting the rule exists to stop, but it is not what the reports describe and it means the bill's first practical effect precedes any vote in either chamber. The wash sale change is the first time a United States tax provision has been drafted to see through a token to the instrument it references. Section 1091(g)(3) does not ask whether a tokenized share is a security; it asks whether it is economically equivalent to one, and if it is, a loss on the share cannot be crystallised by rotating into the token. That lands on exactly the structures this desk has covered in the last week, from Robinhood's stock tokens to Nasdaq's plans for native tokenized equities, and it prices something those structures had left unpriced: the ability to hold the same economic exposure in two wrappers with two tax identities. On stablecoins the bill makes a licence, not a peg, the thing that earns par treatment. A dollar token whose issuer is neither GENIUS-permitted nor OCC-registered is outside section 1063 entirely, which means every transaction in it is a disposition measured against market price rather than redemption value, and it also stays inside the wash sale rule, from which qualified stablecoins are carved out. Tether's USDT is the largest token in that position and it is the asset at issue in the Manhattan forfeiture complaint filed the same day. The GENIUS Act already set a supervisory advantage for permitted issuers; this would add a tax one, and it would be visible in the Secretary's published list of qualified stablecoins rather than in a rulebook. The 5,000-transaction caps decide who the reliefs are for. Both are written against the same risk, that a taxpayer runs enough volume to turn a de minimis exclusion into a structural exemption, and both draw the line at activity rather than at size or intent. The effect is that the two headline reliefs are retail reliefs, and that a market maker, an active trader and a payment business are all left on the existing rules. Section 402, by contrast, is a supply-side fix with no threshold at all, and it removes the reason a staking exchange-traded product had to choose between staking its holdings and keeping grantor trust treatment.

What is not settled

Whether any of this survives the markup is the first question, and a committee that noticed the bill the evening it was introduced has left members about thirty-six hours with 114 pages. Amendments could move any commencement date, and if the bill is reported as amended it is not obvious what 'the date of the introduction of this Act' then means for a disposition made in the window: the phrase fixes on introduction rather than on enactment or on report, so a taxpayer's position would depend on a date that precedes every vote. What it costs is not established. crypto.news reports the wash sale provision as having been estimated to raise $2.074bn over fiscal years 2026 to 2036 and the omitted mining and staking deferral as reducing revenue by $2.956bn over the same period. Neither figure is attributed to a document in that report, jct.gov returns 403 to this runner on both tools, and no score for H.R. 10357 could be read, so neither is carried here. A Joint Committee on Taxation estimate for a markup is normally published with the markup, and it would settle both numbers. The stablecoin definition depends on machinery that does not exist yet. Section 7701(p)(7)(C) says the Secretary 'shall, to the extent feasible, regularly publish a list of qualified U.S. dollar stablecoins', with no deadline and no consequence for not doing it, and until there is a list a taxpayer has to work out an issuer's licence status for itself. Subparagraph (D) then lets the Secretary treat qualified dollar stablecoins as dollars, and other payment stablecoins as currency 'if such treatment is expected to increase net Federal revenues', which conditions a characterisation on the revenue it produces rather than on what the instrument is. And the mining and staking question is open rather than answered. The bill settles source and character and leaves timing where the Internal Revenue Service already had it, which is the outcome the industry groups Cointelegraph names had asked Congress to avoid. Whether the deferral returns as an amendment on Wednesday, and whether Carey offers it against a bill he has sponsored, is the thing to watch in the markup.