The Blockchain Association is urging congressional leaders to separate digital-asset tax policy from the stalled fight over a broader cryptocurrency market-structure bill, arguing that taxpayers and businesses need clearer federal rules regardless of when Congress resolves the larger regulatory debate.
In a letter sent to Senate Majority Leader John Thune, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, the trade group called for legislation addressing tax treatment for digital assets. The Blockchain Association, which says it represents more than 100 companies, described the current framework as unclear and difficult to apply to routine onchain activity.
The appeal comes after the Senate’s market-structure effort, known as the Clarity Act, failed to advance in its first procedural vote last month. With the wider legislation stalled, the association is pressing lawmakers to move narrower tax provisions that could be attached to future legislation rather than wait for a comprehensive crypto package.
House tax bill offers a possible vehicle
The Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act has emerged as the most immediate legislative route for that effort in the House. The bill passed the House Ways and Means Committee last month and would establish federal tax rules tailored to digital assets.
Among its provisions is a proposed de minimis exemption for certain small transactions. Under the measure described by the Blockchain Association, network fees of $10 or less would not create a taxable event. Such an exemption could reduce recordkeeping burdens for people who pay transaction fees to transfer tokens, interact with decentralized applications, or move assets between wallets.
That detail addresses a practical problem in the current system. A network fee paid in cryptocurrency can involve disposing of a small amount of an asset, potentially creating a capital gain or loss calculation even when the transaction itself has little economic significance. For frequent blockchain users, those calculations can multiply rapidly across a year.
House consideration of the Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act is not expected to resume until after the November elections, according to the material provided. That timetable leaves the measure competing with other post-election legislative priorities and raises the prospect that tax provisions may need to be included in a larger bill to reach the president’s desk.
Association seeks privacy and wash-sale rules
The Blockchain Association’s letter goes beyond the House bill’s small-transaction exemption. It asked congressional leaders to consider taxpayer privacy protections, a de minimis framework, and the extension of wash-sale rules to digital assets.
Wash-sale rules generally prevent taxpayers from claiming a loss on an asset sale if they quickly buy back the same or a substantially identical asset. Those restrictions apply to securities, but the treatment of cryptocurrencies has differed because digital assets have not been uniformly classified as securities for tax purposes.
Extending the rules to crypto would limit a common tax-loss-harvesting strategy in which a trader sells a token at a loss near the end of a tax year, claims the loss, then promptly repurchases the same token to maintain market exposure. The association’s inclusion of that request suggests its tax agenda is not limited to reducing compliance obligations; it also seeks clearer anti-abuse rules that place crypto closer to established financial-asset tax treatment.
The group also called for protections around taxpayer information. That issue has become more sensitive as reporting requirements for digital-asset brokers expand and tax authorities seek more detailed records of token transactions. The policy challenge is to give the Internal Revenue Service transaction information needed for compliance while limiting unnecessary collection or exposure of personal data.
Reporting pressures are growing
The legislative push lands as traders, wallet providers and tax software firms prepare for more standardized reporting. New Form 1099-DA reporting is intended to provide taxpayers and the IRS with information on digital-asset proceeds, although the usefulness of those forms will depend on whether reporting entities can accurately identify transactions across platforms and wallets.
Crypto activity often creates more complicated records than a conventional brokerage account. Tokens can be transferred between self-custodied wallets, used to pay network fees, exchanged through decentralized protocols, or received through rewards and other onchain activity. Matching a later sale to its original cost basis can require detailed transaction histories, especially when assets have moved between services.
The Blockchain Association’s letter frames legislation as a way to address those issues through rules written specifically for digital assets rather than through piecemeal interpretations of tax provisions designed before widespread blockchain use.
Smaller tax measures may outlast the market-structure fight
The Clarity Act’s stalled Senate path has narrowed Congress’s near-term options. Broad market-structure legislation would address regulatory jurisdiction and the classification of digital-asset activity, but it faces more political and technical disputes than a targeted tax measure.
Tax legislation could therefore become the more realistic area for limited bipartisan action, particularly if lawmakers look for provisions to attach to a budget package or other must-pass fiscal legislation. That route would not resolve the regulatory questions surrounding token issuance, trading venues, or federal oversight. It could, though, establish rules for everyday tax calculations that users and businesses confront now.
For the Blockchain Association, the strategy is to prevent tax policy from remaining tied to the fate of the larger market-structure bill. Its request places immediate emphasis on small transactions, reporting, privacy and loss rules—issues that can affect taxpayers even while Congress remains divided over the architecture of U.S. crypto regulation.
For deeper context on evolving U.S. crypto rules, explore how regulation shapes adoption in this detailed overview.
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