That trend is likely to continue in 2026, tax experts predict, despite growing calls for targeted relief in specific areas, including cryptocurrency taxation, the corporate book minimum tax, technical corrections to the GOP budget law, international tax, affordable housing incentives and healthcare-related provisions.
Early in 2026, House Republicans plan to focus on addressing the nation's healthcare affordability crisis and revamping the Affordable Care Act, which is now too ingrained in society to remove it, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters in mid-December.
"In the first quarter, January and February of next year, you'll see more activity on this," he promised. "The American people's attention is on healthcare for obvious reasons. It is a serious problem."
Just before leaving Washington at the close of the session, House lawmakers agreed to a discharge petition from Democrats to bring up a three-year extension of the ACA enhanced premium tax credits. Lawmakers expect a vote in January.
Meanwhile, Democrats believe they are poised to win control of the U.S. House in the November 2026 elections, House Ways and Means Committee Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., said, because Americans are souring on unmet GOP promises to address the rising costs of healthcare, food and other tariff-inspired inflationary price hikes.
"Republicans are ignoring the pain — the pain we're seeing across the country for everyday Americans — and make no mistake, it is going to cost them the majority," DelBene told reporters.
Here, Law360 examines federal tax policy to watch in 2026.
Cryptocurrency Taxes
Digital asset taxation remains one of the few tax areas drawing bipartisan interest, and Congress is expected to devote more attention to crypto tax rules in 2026 after advancing broader regulatory efforts, according to Ray Beeman, a partner with EY's Washington Council.
Lawmakers are expected to prioritize "closing reporting gaps, establishing workable definitions and giving taxpayers clearer compliance paths in the crypto ecosystem," he said.
Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., chair of the Senate Banking committee's digital assets subcommittee, said she hopes bipartisan cryptocurrency tax legislation will move through Congress next year. Two of her top tax priorities for 2026 are reducing reporting requirements for taxpayers buying items with cryptocurrency and discontinuing double taxation on Bitcoin miners.
Despite bipartisan support among House and Senate tax writers to move the legislation, "seemingly everything with digital assets is controversial," she told Law360.
Shehan Chandrasekera, head of tax strategy at CoinTracker, said Congress is mulling specific proposals aimed at reducing friction for everyday crypto users. Several issues are on the table, he said, including a potential de minimis exemption for small transactions.
"Multiple bipartisan bills propose excluding low value crypto payments from capital gains taxation," he said.
If enacted, he said, routine purchases under a set dollar threshold would no longer trigger taxable events or reporting requirements, which "would materially reduce friction for everyday crypto use."
Chandrasekera also pointed to growing momentum in Congress and among tax policy officials to apply wash sale rules to digital assets.
"In short, it would create parity across asset classes," he said.
Another unresolved issue drawing attention is the tax treatment of staking rewards.
"The industry continues to push for definitive guidance on whether staking rewards constitute newly created property taxed only upon sale or taxable income upon receipt," Chandrasekera said.
He added that the issue has significant implications for compliance burdens, income timing and valuation.
Corporate Book Tax
Adam N. Michel, director of tax policy studies at the Cato Institute, said the interaction between the corporate alternative minimum tax, passed by the Democrats in 2022, and the expensing provisions in the GOP's 2025 budget law is among the larger unresolved issues being discussed among tax professionals.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury is facing mounting scrutiny over whether it has the authority to issue guidance allowing retroactive research and experimentation expensing for purposes of the corporate alternative minimum tax, according to the Tax Law Center at New York University School of Law.
"Treasury should not issue guidance allowing retroactive R&E expensing for CAMT purposes since that would violate the purposes of the statute and would be nothing more than yet another tax cut to large corporations that Congress elected not to provide in [the federal budget law]," the group said in a statement.
It is "hard to imagine how this carveout could be justified under statutory authority," the organization said, warning that it would continue a trend of administrative guidance granting CAMT tax cuts not contemplated by statute.
Technical Corrections
House Ways and Means Committee ranking member Richard Neal, D-Mass., said the likelihood of Democrats and Republicans working on a bipartisan fix to the 2025 GOP budget law is pretty low. The lack of willingness to work together to correct technical errors is another example of the breakdown of the institution of Congress, he told Law360.
"These used to be fairly easy things to accomplish. There was sort of pent-up demand to have them play out," he said. Now, the political parties "more and more see bipartisanship based on their perspective."
Historically, technical corrections are easier to enact when both parties share ownership of a tax package and feel responsibility for fixing drafting errors or unintended interactions, Michel said.
"That's not the case here," Michel said, noting that Republicans passed the 2025 budget law
on a fully partisan basis, so Democrats have little incentive to clean up what they view as not their problem.Michel said the most realistic scenario is that small items with bipartisan support could be attached to a must-pass vehicle, such as the January funding bill. He pointed to the period following the 2017 tax overhaul law
, when bipartisan fixes such as the grain glitch and qualified improvement property were enacted through a funding measure.Even so, Michel said he remains skeptical that Republicans will be eager to reopen the bill in a way that could give Democrats leverage to demand policy concessions.
Retirement Policy
Lawmakers have signaled continued interest in a potential Secure 3.0 retirement package, even as broader tax legislation in this area appears unlikely in the near term.
Secure 3.0 would follow the Secure Act
of 2019 and Secure 2.0 enacted in 2022, both of which aimed to expand access to employer-sponsored retirement plans. During negotiations over the GOP tax and policy bill signed into law July 4, some retirement provisions were deliberately held back for possible future consideration."There were some provisions that we wanted to include in the [budget bill] that we ultimately did not, because we wanted to reserve those for a potential Secure 3.0," a chief aide to House Speaker Johnson, told Beeman last year at a tax conference in Washington, D.C. "Some of them are revenue raisers, and so we've put those on the side."
One potential legislative vehicle for advancing those provisions is the INVEST Act, a bipartisan securities law package that passed the House by a 302-123 vote in mid-December with support from 87 Democrats and is now headed to the Senate.
The INVEST Act would expand access to capital for entrepreneurs and small businesses, broaden investment opportunities in private markets and streamline disclosure requirements, according to Rep. Troy Downing, R-Mont., whose proposal to expand capital access for rural businesses was included in the legislation.
While the measure is not focused on retirement policy, its bipartisan support and scope have led some observers to view it as a possible vehicle for advancing narrower retirement-related provisions outside a broader tax bill.
Healthcare and Housing
Healthcare is also expected to remain a focal point for lawmakers in 2026, with tax provisions playing a central role in broader policy discussions about costs and coverage, Beeman said. Lawmakers are increasingly linking health policy and tax policy, particularly in areas where tax credits and cost-sharing structures are central to access and affordability, he said.
"Healthcare remains a perennial priority," Beeman said, adding that Congress is exploring tax provisions that affect insurance premiums and consumer costs as part of a broader health legislative package.
In mid-December, the Senate failed to pass procedural votes on two healthcare proposals to address the upcoming lapse in the Affordable Care Act
's enhanced premium tax credits, including a proposal by Democrats to extend the subsidies for three years.The Senate voted 51-48 during a cloture vote for the Lower Health Care Costs Act, or S. 3385, failing to meet the two-thirds supermajority needed to advance Democrats' proposal to extend the tax credit expansion implemented under the American Rescue Plan Act
of 2021 through 2028. The bill, introduced by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., was a last-ditch effort to extend the subsidies before they expire Dec. 31.House and Senate Democrats had made their push to extend the ACA credits — the centerpiece of their resistance to a GOP plan that sought to pass a stopgap funding bill that would have kept Treasury and other federal agencies operating until Nov. 21. The federal government remained closed for 43 days.
Right before the ACA subsidy extension vote, the Senate also failed to garner enough support to begin debate on the Health Care Freedom for Patients Act, or S. 3386. The chamber voted 51-48, failing to meet the two-thirds threshold to move toward a vote on the proposal, which was introduced by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, and committee member Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Fla. Crapo touted the proposal as an alternative to Democrats' temporary COVID-era bonus payments.
Another hot-button issue facing Congress is the ongoing nationwide shortage of affordable housing. Housing experts have floated dozens of ideas to improve the number of options for working-class families who are priced out of the housing market, including expansion of the low-income housing tax credit, changes to capital gains tax rates and other proposals to ease the nation's affordable housing crisis.
Dozens of legislative housing proposals were introduced last year by members, on top of multiple changes made by the Republicans' 2025 budget law. That law included expanding the low-income housing tax credit, allowing mortgage insurance premiums to be deducted — along with mortgage interest — and raising the cap on deducting state and local taxes to $40,000.
House Ways and Means Committee member Jimmy Panetta, D-Calif., told Law360 that increasing the supply of affordable housing will likely require Congress to look at expanding the housing tax credit program next year. In addition, Panetta said his legislation to provide capital gain tax relief to homeowners would also open up the market for first-time home buyers, especially those in areas with high-cost homes.
"You want to incentivize them to protect their nest egg, knowing that they'll do that when they sell their home," he said. "Right now, they don't even think about it because they know they're going to get a huge tax hit on the stuff."
Senate Finance Committee member Todd Young, R-Ohio, said Senate lawmakers are taking a multifaceted approach to addressing the housing affordability crisis. He cited his bipartisan legislation, the Identifying Regulatory Barriers to Housing Supply Act, cosponsored by Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hi., that would remove overly burdensome land use and zoning policies that contribute to 40% of the high costs of rents and mortgages.
Young and Senate Finance Committee member Mark Warner, D-Va., have also reintroduced the Neighborhood Homes Investment Act to boost renovation and purchase of distressed housing. The legislation would create a federal tax credit that covers the cost between building or renovating a home in these areas and the price at which they can be sold.
Despite activity across several targeted areas, Michel of the Cato Institute said he expects tax policy to be quieter in 2026 than in 2025, with limited appetite for reopening major legislation.
"There will also continue to be chatter about a reconciliation 2.0, which could include things like capital gains tax cuts on homes or inflation indexing. Or even tariff dividend checks," Michel said. "But I think another big package is unlikely."
--Additional reporting by Asha Glover, Kellie Mejdrich and Kat Lucero. Editing by Tim Ruel and Emma Brauer.
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