House Ways and Means Committee Republicans are weighing whether to strip mining and staking tax deferral provisions out of a digital asset tax package to win Democratic votes ahead of the midterms. The provisions, from Rep. Mike Carey's H.R. 9175, would let miners and stakers defer tax until they sell their rewards. A markup is scheduled for September 16, 2026.
House Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee are weighing whether to strip out provisions that would change how crypto mining and staking rewards are taxed. The move could reshape one of the most consequential pieces of digital asset legislation moving through Congress.
What H.R. 9175 would change
The provisions come from H.R. 9175, the Tax Clarity for Mining and Staking Act, introduced on June 8, 2026, by Rep. Mike Carey (R-OH). The bill would let miners and stakers defer tax on newly created crypto rewards until they actually sell the assets, rather than treating those rewards as taxable ordinary income the moment they arrive in a wallet.
Under the IRS's current framework, validators who receive tokens as a reward owe income tax on the fair market value of those tokens the moment they receive them, whether or not they sell. H.R. 9175 would push the taxable event to the point of sale instead, aligning the treatment with how other property transactions work in the tax code.
The bipartisan math behind the trade-off
Committee Chair Jason Smith (R-MO) is reportedly trying to advance the less contentious elements of the broader tax package ahead of the midterm elections. Rep. Steven Horsford (D-NV), described as a significant Democratic supporter of crypto regulation, is the key figure in that calculation. Yet his backing apparently comes at a cost: the mining and staking provisions.
Democrats on the committee raised concerns during a hearing on June 9, 2026 that a tax deferral privilege specifically for digital asset rewards could create an uneven playing field compared with traditional investments. Fidelity, Coinbase, and NYU Law's Tax Law Center testified at that hearing on how the tax structure shapes the crypto investment landscape.
Industry pushes back
On June 21, 2026, a coalition of crypto industry groups sent a letter urging the committee to pass the bill without modifications, arguing that stripping the provisions would hurt bipartisan support rather than help it. The markup is scheduled for September 16, 2026.
For miners and stakers, the stakes are concrete. Operations with heavy capital spending on hardware and energy already run on thin margins, and a tax obligation on rewards before any liquidity event compounds that pressure, particularly in bear markets when rewards may be worth less by the time they are sold than when they were earned.
Source: Crypto Briefing
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