The Bitcoin Policy Institute (BPI), an industry advocacy group, has set a target window between March and August 2026 to push a de minimis tax exemption for Bitcoin through Congress, warning that time is running out for effective legislation.
BPI said it has worked with 19 congressional offices in the House and Senate over the past three months to propose US lawmakers tax exemptions for Bitcoin (BTC) transactions above certain thresholds.
Extending de minimis tax exemptions beyond dollar-denominated stablecoins has bipartisan support, but the BPI has warned that “the window for Bitcoin tax legislation is narrowing.” BPI said:
“As the summer approaches, Congress is increasingly consumed by the dynamics of the midterms, and the breadth of complex tax legislation is shrinking each week. Senator Lummis, a strong champion of this issue, will leave the Senate in January 2027.
If the package does not come together in the next few months, the opportunity may not return for years,” BPI said.
Under current US tax rules, using BTC to pay for goods and services creates a taxable event and tax reporting to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and prevents the use of Bitcoin as a medium of exchange.
The de minimis exemption allows small crypto transactions, typically less than a specified dollar threshold, to be excluded from capital gains reporting, allowing users to spend Bitcoin on small purchases without accounting for gains or losses.
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Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis introduced a bill in July 2025 that proposed a de minimis tax exemption for cryptocurrency transactions of $300 or less that amount to $5,000 annually.
However, the bill failed to gain traction in the Senate, and a competing bill focused entirely on tax exemptions for stablecoins was introduced to the House of Representatives in 2025 by Congressmen Max Miller and Stephen Horsford.
According to Pierre Rochard, a board member of the treasury company BTC Strive, bitcoin payments on current transactions of digital assets are suspended under the US tax code.
“The number one barrier to the adoption of Bitcoin payments is tax policy, not scale technology,” Rochard said at X.
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