The House Ways and Means Committee approved the Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act by a vote of 38 to 5 on Wednesday, less than a day after the Senate failed to reach the 60 votes needed to advance the Clarity Act, the broader market-structure bill the crypto industry had spent over a year lobbying for.
The tax bill is narrower by design. It would set a $10 threshold below which small crypto transactions are exempt from capital gains reporting, a change aimed at everyday purchases rather than trading, and would clarify tax treatment for mining, staking, wash sales and dollar-pegged stablecoins. Committee chairman Jason Smith argued that without the threshold, buying a coffee with crypto “triggers an absurd maze of compliance.” Nevada Democrat Steven Horsford called the package “basic tax rules for digital assets.”
Not every Democrat on the committee agreed. Texas Democrat Lloyd Doggett voted no, saying the committee “remains the only place in Congress that’s rushing to provide favors to this industry,” a reminder that the same partisan split that sank the Clarity Act in the Senate has not gone away, it has just moved to a bill with lower stakes and better odds.
Congress has roughly five weeks of scheduled floor time left before January, once the post-election calendar is accounted for, and a tax bill clearing committee is a long way from a signature. The Clarity Act’s collapse showed that a comfortable committee margin does not guarantee a floor majority, and nobody in either chamber has said when, or whether, this bill gets a vote before that window closes.
