After no floor action since 2025, H.R. 3074 (the Common Cents Act) was placed on the House schedule under suspension of the rules the week of July 7, 2026 — a fast-track path with limited debate, no amendments, and a two-thirds threshold. A new substitute text restores the cash-rounding provisions the committee had stripped, but as a permissive, opt-in scheme rather than a mandate: the bill's title was changed from 'require' to 'permit,' and it adds Federal Reserve reporting requirements on penny supply. No floor vote had been held as of publication.
H.R. 3074, the Common Cents Act, saw its first floor movement in nearly a year when House leadership placed it on the schedule for the week of July 7, 2026 under suspension of the rules — a fast-track procedure reserved for bills expected to draw broad bipartisan support. Suspension limits debate, allows no floor amendments, and requires a two-thirds majority to pass. As of publication, no floor vote had yet been recorded.
The bill had cleared the House Financial Services Committee 35-13 in July 2025 and then stalled, with no floor action after the committee report was filed in September 2025.
A New Substitute Text — Rounding Is Back, but Optional
The version scheduled for the floor is a substitute that strikes everything after the enacting clause and inserts new text and a new title. Its most consequential change for consumers and retailers: the cash-rounding provisions removed in committee are restored — but reframed as permissive rather than mandatory.
- The bill's title was amended from "to require cash transactions to be rounded" to "to permit cash transactions to be rounded."
- Section 3 provides that any person "may" round, and Section 3(e) states that nothing in the Act "may be construed to require any person to round."
- The rounding scheme itself is symmetric to the nearest five cents: amounts ending in 1, 2, 6, or 7 cents round down; 3, 4, 8, or 9 cents round up. Totals of one or two cents round up to a nickel.
- Rounding applies only to cash — card, check, electronic funds transfer, gift card, and money-order payments are exempt.
- If an employer chooses to round a cash wage payment, it must round up, in the employee's favor.
Federal, State, and Tribal Safe Harbor
Section 4 creates a safe harbor: a business that follows the rounding scheme is not in violation of any federal, state, tribal, or local requirement. The section preserves all minimum-wage, overtime, and paid-leave obligations.
Penny Production and a New Fed Reporting Mandate
As before, the bill directs the Treasury to cease producing one-cent coins for general circulation while allowing continued production for collectors, and confirms that existing pennies remain legal tender.
The substitute also adds a new Federal Reserve reporting requirement (Section 5): within 90 days of enactment, the Board of Governors must publish a strategic plan for accepting penny orders and deposits at commercial coin terminals, assess the impact of penny shortages and rounding on low-income, older, unbanked, and underbanked consumers, and deliver three follow-up progress reports over the following 30 months.
What It Means
If the House passes the substitute, the federal bill would — for the first time — codify the end of penny production and establish a nationwide, opt-in rounding framework with legal protection for businesses that adopt it, without preempting the mandatory or voluntary schemes states have enacted on their own. The Senate companion, S. 1525, remains in committee.