Crypto tax bills move September 16. The wash sale date is June 8.

The House Ways and Means Committee is expected to vote on six crypto tax bills on September 16. Two of them change what a US holder owes.

H.R. 9175 lets miners and stakers elect out of paying tax on rewards the moment they land. Take that election and the entire gain on those coins comes back as ordinary income when you sell, at rates up to 37%, with no long-term capital gains rate available on any of the appreciation. H.R. 9172 extends the wash sale rule to digital assets. Its effective date is written as dispositions after the date the bill was introduced, and that date was June 8, 2026. A loss you harvested in July would be read under a rule Congress has not passed.

The Joint Committee on Taxation scored all six on June 8. The wash sale bill raises $2.07 billion over eleven years, under a tenth of the $23.5 billion Treasury attached to a broader version of the same idea. The six bills together lose about $1.85 billion.

The six bills and what each one is worth

All six were introduced on June 8 by Republicans on the committee, alongside a Democratic discussion draft. The scores below are the JCT's own estimates for fiscal 2026 through 2036, marked very preliminary, and they assume enactment on July 1, 2026.

• H.R. 9175, Tax Clarity for Mining and Staking Act (Rep. Mike Carey). Writes tax at receipt into the Code and adds an election to defer. Costs $2.96 billion.
• H.R. 9172, Applying Existing Tax Anti-Abuse Rules to Digital Assets Act (Rep. Jodey Arrington). Wash sale and constructive sale rules for digital assets. Raises $2.07 billion.
• H.R. 9178, Less Tax Paperwork for Digital Asset Owners Act (Rep. Rudy Yakym). Network fee exception, stablecoin basis rules, a simplified accounting election. Costs $1.66 billion.
• H.R. 9176, Providing Analogous Rules for Digital Assets Act (Rep. David Kustoff). Lending without a taxable event, a mark-to-market election, a foreign investment safe harbor. Raises $1.36 billion.
• H.R. 9173, Charitable Deductions for Digital Asset Donations Act (Rep. Mike Kelly). Drops the qualified appraisal requirement for donated tokens with reliable market prices. Costs $672 million.
• H.R. 9174, Digital Assets Voluntary Disclosure Program Act (Rep. Aaron Bean). A Treasury disclosure program with reduced penalties. Negligible.

The Democratic draft, the End Digital Assets Tax Shelters Act, closes the Puerto Rico source rule for digital assets and raises $141 million. Add it and the package still loses $1.71 billion.

The deferral costs you the capital gains rate

Today the rule comes from Revenue Ruling 2023-14, issued July 31, 2023: the fair market value of a staking reward goes into gross income the year you gain dominion and control over it. H.R. 9175 writes that into a new Code subchapter, section 1400W-1, and lets you deduct the electricity and the hosting fees as you incur them.

Section 1400W-2 is the election, and it is where the trade sits. Elect it and nothing goes into income when the reward arrives. Your costs get capitalized into basis instead of expensed. Then, on disposition, the bill says any gain "shall be treated as gain from the disposition of property which is not a capital asset." The JCT description repeats it in the same words. No capital asset means no holding period and no long-term rate of 0, 15 or 20%. Ordinary rates run to 37% for 2026 under Rev. Proc. 2025-32.

Put numbers on it. Say a validator earns 10 ETH worth $30,000 across a year and sells three years later for $60,000, sitting in the 24% ordinary bracket with a 15% long-term rate.

• Under current law: $7,200 due at receipt, then $4,500 on the $30,000 of appreciation. Total $11,700.
• Under the election: nothing at receipt, then 24% of the full $60,000 at sale. Total $14,400.

The election costs $2,700 in this case and buys a three-year deferral on $7,200. Whether that trade pays depends on what the deferred cash earns in the meantime and on which direction the coin goes. Flip the example so the coin falls and the election wins outright, because you never paid tax on value that evaporated. That is the honest read: the deferral is insurance against paying tax on a paper high, priced in surrendered capital gains treatment.

Two details make it heavier than it looks. The election applies to the year you make it and every year after, unless the Secretary consents to revoke it. And the bill amends section 199A to exclude both the income at receipt and the gain at sale from qualified business income, so the 20% pass-through deduction is off the table either way. If you run a mining LLC, read that clause before you read the headline.

Staking yields are already thin. Ethereum's staking rate fell as participation hit a record, and a rate change on the rewards is a bigger swing than most validators price in.

The wash sale rule is dated June 8, not enactment

Section 1091 currently applies to "stock or securities". Crypto is neither for this purpose, which is why selling at a loss and buying the same coin sixty seconds later works today. H.R. 9172 strikes "stock or securities" throughout and inserts "specified assets", defined to cover any digital asset other than a qualified US dollar stablecoin under the GENIUS Act. Buy back inside the 30 days on either side and the loss is disallowed.

Then section 2(e): the amendments "shall apply to dispositions after the date of the introduction of this Act." The JCT table uses the same shorthand, dacsa DOI, dispositions and constructive sales after date of introduction. Introduction was June 8, 2026.

The timing matters because 2026 handed people losses. Bitcoin traded at $77,216 on September 12, down from roughly $95,000 early in the year. Anyone who sold into that and bought back the same week did something that is legal now and would be disallowed retroactively if the bill passes as written.

Nothing will flag it, either. The bill carries a transition rule saying that for dispositions before January 1, 2028, a broker may report your adjusted basis without regard to section 1091. Your 1099-B will look the same. The tracking lands on you.

One carve-out is worth knowing. New section 1091(h) says an acquisition does not count for the wash sale rule if the asset was acquired in connection with validating transactions. A staker who sells at a loss and keeps receiving rewards does not trip the rule on their own rewards.

The scorekeeper says this is a timing shift

Look at what the deferral bill costs by year and the shape gives it away.

A permanent tax cut does not decay to $10 million. Revenue that leaves in 2027 comes back as the deferred coins get sold, which is what a deferral is supposed to do. The mining and staking bill is the most expensive thing in the package and also the least permanent.

The $23.5 billion figure moving through coverage of the wash sale rule comes from Treasury's fiscal 2025 Greenbook, which proposed a wider version that also reached related-party transactions. The bill in front of the committee scores at $2.07 billion. Both numbers are real; they describe different proposals.

The relief for small transactions is $10

Several accounts of the June hearing described the package as including relief for small crypto transactions. Here is the provision. H.R. 9178 says no gain or loss is recognized when you dispose of a digital asset to pay a network fee, and a de minimis network fee means the total paid to validate one transaction does not exceed $10.

That is gas, not groceries. There is no personal-use exemption anywhere in the package. Buy a coffee with bitcoin on September 17 and you still have a taxable disposition with a basis calculation attached.

What would change the answer

The committee had not posted a markup notice on its own schedule as of September 12. September 16 comes from Bloomberg, relayed by CoinDesk and Crypto Briefing, and a date that exists only in reporting can move.

Markups amend, and effective dates are among the easiest things to move. A loss rule dated to introduction is exactly the provision that draws an amendment, and the committee's own June release already lists one from Rep. Steven Horsford that would cap deferral elections at five years. Clearing Ways and Means also leaves the House floor and the Senate ahead, on a calendar that is already carrying the CLARITY Act's unfinished fights.

Watch two things on September 16. Whether the wash sale effective date survives the markup in its current form, and whether anyone on the committee says out loud what section 1400W-2 does to the character of the gain. The first tells you whether this summer's harvested losses are safe. The second tells you whether the people voting have read past the summary.

Sources

• Ways and Means, New Legislation Modernizes Tax Rules for Digital Assets, 9 June 2026
• Joint Committee on Taxation, description of the digital asset tax legislation, including revenue estimates dated 8 June 2026
• H.R. 9175, Tax Clarity for Mining and Staking Act, as introduced 8 June 2026
• H.R. 9172, Applying Existing Tax Anti-Abuse Rules to Digital Assets Act, as introduced 8 June 2026
• IRS Revenue Ruling 2023-14, 31 July 2023
• IRS Topic no. 409, capital gains and losses
• IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-32, inflation adjustments for tax year 2026
• Treasury, General Explanations of the Administration's Fiscal Year 2025 Revenue Proposals
• Crypto Briefing, House Ways and Means sets 16 September markup, 11 September 2026
• CoinDesk, bitcoin price, 12 September 2026

This is not financial advice.