House lawmakers revive PARITY Act with new stablecoin and

Reps. Steven Horsford and Max Miller have reintroduced a revised Digital Asset PARITY Act as Congress heads toward broader tax negotiations. The latest text rewrites stablecoin tax mechanics, explicitly extends wash-sale rules to digital assets, and separates “passive staking” from trading-like activity.

Key Takeaways

Reps. Steven Horsford (D-Nev.) and Max Miller (R-Ohio) reintroduced the Digital Asset PARITY Act in late March 2026.
The proposal first circulated as a discussion draft in December 2025 and was re-released with revised text on March 26, 2026.
The updated stablecoin provision removes a previously noted $200 threshold and instead blocks gain/loss recognition on regulated payment stablecoin sales unless basis falls below 99% of redemption value.
The draft text also applies wash-sale rules to digital asset transactions and distinguishes “passive staking” from trading-like activity.

PARITY Act Returns as Congress Heads Toward Tax Talks

The Digital Asset Protection, Accountability, Regulation, Innovation, Taxation and Yields (PARITY) Act is back on the table, with Reps. Steven Horsford (D-Nev.) and Max Miller (R-Ohio) reintroducing the bill in late March 2026.

The timing matters because Congress is expected to take up taxes in the coming months, creating a window where crypto provisions can get stapled onto broader packages. For U.S.-based traders, the practical point is simple: any change to how the IRS treats routine crypto activity hits reporting burden, realized P&L timing, and the viability of common tax-loss workflows.

The bill’s text has been moving in “discussion draft” posture. It first appeared in December 2025 and was re-released on March 26, 2026 for further review.

Stablecoin Tax Rewrite: From a $200 Note to a 99% Basis-vs-Redemption Test

The most trader-relevant rewrite is the stablecoin section. The December 2025 draft included a de minimis-style section for payments made via “regulated payment stablecoins,” with a note indicating a $200 threshold. That framing looked like an attempt to reduce tax friction for small payments, but it was stablecoin-specific and did not appear to extend to assets like bitcoin.

The March 2026 text drops the $200 note entirely and pivots to a stablecoin-specific recognition test that is closer to a mechanical neutralizer for routine stablecoin “sales.” The draft states: “In the case of any sale of a regulated payment stablecoin, no gain or loss shall be recognized on such sale unless the taxpayer’s basis in such stablecoin is less than 99 percent of the redemption value of such stablecoin,”.

In market-structure terms, that shift signals lawmakers are moving away from a simple small-transaction threshold concept and toward a rule designed to ignore noise unless there is meaningful basis slippage versus redemption value. The revised text also creates a deemed basis of $1 for exchanges, described as separate from sales of the stablecoin, though the excerpt does not lay out operational detail beyond that description.

Wash Sales Come to Crypto in the Draft Text

The draft would also apply wash-sale rules to digital asset transactions. That matters because wash-sale treatment is one of the cleanest “plug-in” items Congress can add if it wants to tighten perceived tax arbitrage without rewriting the entire crypto tax stack.

The direction is not new. Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) included wash-sale provisions in her tax bill last year, and the PARITY Act’s explicit inclusion keeps that concept live as a legislative building block if broader tax talks advance.

The bill also draws a line between “passive staking” and activities like trading. The text, as described, reads more like taxonomy work than a finished framework, and it leaves definitional questions unresolved for DeFi participants whose activity can blend staking, liquidity provision, and active position management.

The Legislative Path Is Still Murky—Here’s What Would Confirm Momentum

The next steps for the PARITY Act remain unclear, and the broader vehicle is uncertain. While reconciliation tax-bill chatter is in the air and President Donald Trump has revealed fiscal year 2027 budget requests, it is far from certain that reconciliation legislation will happen or that crypto provisions will be included.

Momentum would look like process, not headlines: movement beyond discussion-draft posture into hearings or markup, or the emergence of a companion Senate vehicle. Traders should also watch for follow-on text that clarifies what qualifies as “passive staking” versus trading-like activity, since that definition will determine whether the language is usable for real-world DeFi behavior.

Finally, the wash-sale provision is worth tracking across other negotiations. If similar digital-asset wash-sale language starts showing up in other tax packages, it increases the odds it becomes a consensus add-on even if the rest of the PARITY Act stalls.

Traders Should Treat This as a Positioning Signal, Not a Done Deal

I read the stablecoin rewrite as the most actionable signal in the text. Dropping the $200 note in favor of a 99%-of-redemption basis test looks like an attempt to neutralize routine stablecoin churn for tax purposes, but only inside a regulated payment stablecoin category that still depends on definitions and legislative plumbing.

The threshold that matters is whether this draft graduates into committee process or gets mirrored in a reconciliation vehicle. If that happens, the wash-sale and staking taxonomy language starts to look structural rather than narrative-driven, and it would matter in practical terms by changing how quickly U.S. traders can realize losses and how cleanly they can treat stablecoin flows as non-events for tax reporting.

Sources

CoinDesk