A House hearing on six crypto tax bills revealed a lack of bipartisan consensus on the subject Tuesday, with industry leaders pushing to expand the legislation—and Democrats questioning whether the entire process should be slowed down significantly.
“There is a sense of urgency, but there’s also a sense of, ‘are we acting too quick without knowing what we’re doing?’” Rep. John Larson (D-CT) said Tuesday, during the House Ways & Means Committee’s crypto tax hearing. “There’s far more questions than there seem to be answers.”
“I’m aligned with that goal—eventually,” Neal said at Tuesday’s hearing, regarding his interest in passing a bipartisan crypto tax bill.
Democrats—including pro-crypto members of the party—expressed concern Tuesday that allowing taxes on such rewards to be deferred could make crypto more attractive than traditional, taxable investments like corporate stocks and bonds, and thereby significantly reshape financial markets.
“It seems to be a real sticking point in all this, and it seems that maybe we’re at an impasse,” Rep. Mike Thompson (D-CA), said of tax policy regarding crypto staking and mining. Thompson previously voted to pass both the stablecoin-focused GENIUS Act and the more wide-ranging Clarity Act, which would formally legalize most crypto activity in the United States.
Lawrence Zlatkin, Coinbase’s vice president of tax, told the committee it should expand the de minimis exemption to include all digital assets.
“A consumer who uses Bitcoin to buy a pair of jeans still has to calculate and report a capital gain,” Zlatkin said. “That’s not good tax policy. Americans shouldn’t need an accountant to buy jeans.”
With the Clarity Act facing a ticking clock in the Senate as November’s midterms fast approach, crypto policy leaders had hoped a win on crypto taxes could prove to be a consolation prize, in the event a market structure bill fails to become law before the end of the year.
