PARITY Act pushes new US crypto tax relief framework
Recent crypto tax proposal aims to reduce regulatory uncertainty for investors, businesses, and consumers using digital assets in everyday transactions.
A bipartisan group of US lawmakers has introduced the Digital Asset Protection, Accountability, Regulation, Innovation, Taxation, and Yields Act, known as the PARITY Act, as Congress continues expanding its focus on cryptocurrency regulation and taxation.
Representatives Steven Horsford, Max Miller, Suzan DelBene and Mike Carey introduced the proposal on 19 May, calling for clearer and more practical tax standards for digital assets. Supporters say the bill is intended to provide clarity, consistency and guardrails for the taxation of digital asset activities.
The proposal would create a deemed-basis rule for regulated, dollar-pegged payment stablecoins, treating certain digital dollars used like cash as cash for tax purposes. Lawmakers say the measure is designed to reduce administrative burdens for the Internal Revenue Service, provide consumer relief in routine transactions and prevent misuse through trading or arbitrage activity.
The bill would also provide tax certainty for foreign investors trading on US digital asset platforms, extend securities-lending tax principles to qualifying digital asset loans and apply anti-abuse provisions such as wash-sale and constructive-sale rules to digital assets.
Additional provisions would align the tax treatment of professional digital asset dealers and active traders with existing securities markets by allowing a mark-to-market election. The bill would also address the ‘phantom income’ issue for miners and stakers by creating an election for when digital asset rewards are taxed, modernise charitable contribution rules for digital assets and clarify that passive protocol-level staking by investment funds is not a trade or business.
The measure arrives as Congress debates broader cryptocurrency legislation linked to market structure and stablecoin oversight, including the CLARITY Act. Together, the proposals show how US lawmakers are increasingly addressing digital assets through taxation, consumer protection, market integrity and financial regulation.
Why does it matter?
Crypto taxation remains one of the main barriers to wider digital asset use, especially for stablecoin payments, staking, lending and routine transactions. The PARITY Act would aim to make tax treatment more predictable while applying anti-abuse rules to digital assets that are more closely aligned with traditional financial markets. Its impact would depend on whether Congress can integrate tax reform with wider debates on stablecoins, market structure and investor protection.
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