House circulates seven crypto tax drafts targeting stablecoins

The House Ways and Means Committee is circulating seven draft bills that would change how the United States taxes digital assets. The drafts, distributed internally, split a broader bipartisan proposal into standalone measures that members can advance separately. They surfaced days before a full committee hearing on digital-asset taxation scheduled for June 9.

The texts revive parts of the Digital Asset PARITY Act, first released as a discussion draft and formally introduced on May 19 by Representatives Max Miller and Steven Horsford. Committee leadership has identified digital-asset taxation as a priority this session.

One set of drafts would treat routine stablecoin payments as non-taxable events and remove automatic reporting for ordinary transfers to reduce compliance burdens for everyday transactions. A separate Senate proposal from Senator Cynthia Lummis would provide a $300 de minimis exemption with a $5,000 annual cap for crypto transactions.

The bills address staking and mining by allowing validators and miners to defer recognition of income from earned tokens until those tokens are sold. The drafts would also let active traders and dealers elect mark-to-market accounting for digital assets, bringing tax treatment closer to that used for many securities.

On lending, the proposals would extend established securities-lending rules to digital assets so that a bona fide loan of a token would not be treated as a taxable sale. The package would apply wash-sale rules to cryptocurrencies for the first time, requiring traders to wait 30 days before claiming a loss and repurchasing the same asset.

The drafts would simplify charitable donation rules for liquid tokens while adding guardrails aimed at limiting tax benefits tied to speculative tokens. Provisions affecting mining have drawn opposition from Bitcoin advocates. Senator Lummis estimated her related Senate proposal could raise roughly $600 million in receipts from 2025 through 2034.

The June 9 full committee hearing will examine the seven drafts and test which measures can win bipartisan support. Lawmakers and industry participants are expected to use the hearing to refine the texts. The committee may advance individual bills separately, and the legislative process could proceed slowly as members balance requests for tax relief with revenue considerations.