Congressman Steven Horsford said CoinDesk Consensus Conference in Miami On Tuesday, his bipartisan PARITY Act is a progressive path forward in a Congress where Senate negotiations over market structure have stalled.
“PARITY is designed to establish a sustainable floor, not to be the last word,” he said, noting that existing issues must be addressed “clearly within the jurisdiction of the tax code to ensure protection for the consumer, small businesses and those who own these assets in determining whether they are treated as income or capital gains.”
The Nevada Democrat co-written the plan to discuss the PARITY Act with Republican Rep. Max Miller of Ohio in December, and revised he told moderator Yesha Yadav that he preferred a narrow approach to broad alternatives, including Sen. Cynthia Lummis’ proposal. The risk of a blanket bill, Horsford said, is that “it combines genuinely useful provisions with definitional language that is so broad that it creates other problems.”
Key provisions of PARITY include a cost basis test for stablecoin payments, a five-year tax deferral election on staking and mining rewards, and an extension of wash sale rules to digital assets. Horsford said that while access to retirement accounts is missing from current plans, he sees it as “something I personally want to see, because to close the wealth gap we need to be able to help people plan for retirement. Digital assets are one way to do that. I know there’s a real bipartisan appetite for us to work on this, but rushing and just putting language into a bill without doing it properly creates these consequences involuntary.”
Regarding the broader political climate, Horsford said Senate negotiations to advance the CLARITY Act between Senators Thom Tillis and Angela Alsobrooks appear to be “on hold.” When asked whether bipartisan crypto legislation could be passed before the mid-November election, he declined to commit to a timetable.
“It’s less about a timeline and more about getting it right,” he said. “You can rush and pass a bill in Congress that has unintended consequences that you can’t fix later.”
