The House Ways and Means Committee held a legislative hearing on June 9, where Chairman Jason Smith (R-MO) steered the committee through a review of at least six bills and related drafts aimed at overhauling how the IRS treats digital assets. It was the committee’s first substantial engagement with crypto tax policy in years.
What’s actually in the bills
The draft legislation, released on June 4, tackles several pain points that crypto holders and industry lobbyists have been vocal about for years. Two bills in particular stand out.
H.R. 9178 is designed to reduce the paperwork burden for digital asset owners making small transactions. Under current rules, purchasing something with Bitcoin technically triggers a taxable event, and you’re supposed to report the capital gain or loss. The bill aims to carve out relief for these kinds of everyday uses.
H.R. 9175 addresses deferral options for rewards earned through mining and staking. Right now, when a validator earns staking rewards or a miner receives newly minted tokens, the IRS treats that as taxable income at the moment of receipt. The proposed bill would let recipients defer that tax hit.
Beyond those two measures, the broader package emphasizes parity with traditional financial rules. The committee’s framing is straightforward: digital assets shouldn’t be taxed more harshly than equivalent instruments in traditional finance just because they run on a blockchain.
The political dynamics
Chairman Smith has framed the effort around competitiveness, arguing that the US needs clear “rules of the road” for digital assets to maintain its leadership position.
Reps. Max Miller and Steven Horsford, a Republican and Democrat respectively, contributed foundational work earlier in 2026 that fed into the current legislative package.
As of late June 2026, industry groups support advancing key provisions related to mining and staking without changes.
What this means for investors
For retail investors and everyday crypto users, the small transaction exemption would remove one of the most significant friction points in digital asset adoption, as every transaction currently generates a tax reporting obligation.
For miners and stakers, the deferral provision addresses a structural issue. Proof-of-stake networks like Ethereum generate staking rewards, and the current tax treatment creates a situation where participants can owe more in taxes than their rewards end up being worth. A deferral mechanism would bring crypto staking closer to how other income-generating assets are treated in traditional finance.