What Is Form 1099-DA? The Complete Guide to the New Crypto Tax Form

A form showed up in your Coinbase account this year that has never existed before. It's called Form 1099-DA, it lists digital asset sales you may barely remember making, and half the cost basis column says "unknown" or sits at zero. Meanwhile the IRS received an identical copy. You didn't ask for this form, nobody explained it, and it's now your problem to reconcile.

Form 1099-DA is the single biggest change to crypto tax reporting since the IRS started asking about virtual currency on the 1040. It ends a decade in which exchanges reported almost nothing and taxpayers reconstructed their own history from CSV exports. This guide covers what the form is, who sends it, what every field means, why the basis column is so often blank, and exactly what to do with it when you file.

What Form 1099-DA Is

Form 1099-DA, "Digital Asset Proceeds From Broker Transactions," is the information return that digital asset brokers file with the IRS — and send you a copy of — reporting your sales and exchanges of crypto and other digital assets.

It is the crypto equivalent of the 1099-B that stock brokers have sent for decades. Same basic job: tell the IRS what you sold, what you got for it, and — eventually — what you paid.

The form exists because of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, which extended the definition of "broker" to cover businesses that regularly effect transfers of digital assets on behalf of others. The IRS spent three years writing the regulations, finalized the custodial broker rules in mid-2024, and the reporting obligation switched on for transactions occurring in calendar year 2025 — meaning the first real 1099-DAs landed in taxpayers' hands in early 2026.

The practical consequence is simple and uncomfortable: the IRS now has an independent record of your crypto sales. Under-reporting used to be a matter of the IRS not knowing. It's now a matching problem, and automated matching notices follow automatically when your return doesn't line up.

Who Sends It and Who Gets One

The regulations target custodial brokers — platforms that hold your digital assets and execute transactions for you. That includes:

• Centralized exchanges: Coinbase, Kraken, Gemini, Crypto.com, Bitstamp
• Brokerages with crypto arms: Robinhood Crypto, Webull, Fidelity Crypto
• Payment platforms with custodial crypto: PayPal, Cash App, Venmo
• Some custodial wallet providers and crypto payment processors

You'll receive one if you're a US taxpayer who sold, exchanged, or otherwise disposed of a digital asset through one of these platforms during the year. Note what triggers it:

• Selling crypto for dollars — reportable
• Trading one token for another — reportable, because a crypto-to-crypto swap is a disposition
• Spending crypto on goods or services through a custodial platform — reportable
• Buying and holding — not reportable
• Moving coins between your own wallets — not a sale, though it creates the basis problem described below

Who does not send it: self-custody wallets, decentralized exchanges, and DeFi protocols. The IRS wrote a separate rule extending broker status to DeFi front-ends, and Congress repealed it under the Congressional Review Act in 2025. That repeal is significant and permanent in effect — the CRA bars the agency from issuing a substantially similar rule without new legislation. So if you trade on a DEX, no form is coming, and your reporting obligation is entirely self-directed.

If you hold both stocks and crypto at the same firm, you'll likely receive both a 1099-DA and a 1099-B. They are separate documents with different rules, and our 1099-B vs 1099-DA comparison walks through where they diverge.

What's Actually on the Form

Unlike the 1099-B, which packs a whole year of trades onto a compact grid, the 1099-DA is designed as one reportable transaction per form section, with digital-asset-specific identifiers a stock form never needed.

Field	What it holds
Box 1a — Code for digital asset	A standardized numeric identifier for the specific asset, so the IRS can distinguish tokens with identical tickers
Box 1b — Name of digital asset	Plain name, e.g. "Bitcoin" or "Ether"
Box 1c — Number of units	Quantity disposed of, carried to many decimal places
Box 1d — Date acquired	When you got it, or blank/"various" if the broker doesn't know
Box 1e — Date sold or disposed	The disposition date
Box 1f — Proceeds	Gross proceeds in USD — the number the IRS matches against
Box 1g — Cost or other basis	What you paid, if the broker knows it

Beyond those, the form carries fields the 1099-B has no equivalent for:

• Transaction ID (TxID) and wallet address for on-chain dispositions, letting the IRS tie the entry to a specific blockchain transaction
• Sale of noncovered asset indicator — the flag telling you the broker isn't vouching for basis
• Whether basis was reported to the IRS, the same covered/noncovered distinction that drives which Form 8949 box you use
• Federal income tax withheld, relevant if you were subject to backup withholding
• Loss not allowed indicators for certain transaction types

Most platforms also give you a supplemental CSV or PDF summary alongside the official form. The official form is what the IRS receives; the supplement is what you'll actually work from, because it's usually the only version with all your transactions in one place rather than spread across pages.

The Two-Year Phase-In: Proceeds Now, Basis Next Year

This is the detail that explains most of the confusion, and it's worth being precise about.

For 2025 transactions (forms issued in early 2026): gross proceeds only. Brokers were required to report what you sold and what you received. They were not required to report cost basis. That's why so many 1099-DAs arrived with the basis field empty.

For 2026 transactions (forms issued in early 2027): basis reporting begins for covered digital assets — meaning assets you acquired in a custodial account at that broker on or after the applicable start date, where the broker actually observed your purchase.

So the first year of 1099-DA is deliberately half a form. The IRS gets your proceeds and nothing else, which creates a specific and dangerous asymmetry: if you do nothing, the IRS sees $180,000 of proceeds and zero basis, and assumes $180,000 of gain. The actual gain might be $4,000. Closing that gap is entirely your job, and it's the single most important thing to get right.

Why So Many Boxes Say "Unknown"

Even once basis reporting starts, expect gaps. A broker can only report basis it can see, and crypto is unusually good at hiding basis from the platform reporting it:

1. You transferred coins in from another wallet. The exchange sees ETH arriving. It has no idea whether you bought it at $1,200 or $4,000, or mined it, or were paid in it. Basis: unknown.
2. You bought before the platform started tracking. Assets acquired before the covered-asset start date are noncovered permanently.
3. You acquired it through staking, mining, an airdrop, or a fork. Basis equals the fair market value at receipt, which you should have picked up as ordinary income then. The broker often has no record of that valuation.
4. The platform changed hands, or you migrated accounts. Basis frequently fails to follow.
5. You used a DeFi protocol at any point in the chain of custody. No reporting entity exists to hand basis off.

The result is functionally identical to the noncovered securities problem on a 1099-B: the form arrives incomplete, and you supply the missing number and defend it if asked. Keep the exchange records, the bank transfer that funded the purchase, and the blockchain explorer link. Reconstructed basis is perfectly legal — undocumented basis is what fails an audit.

The Wallet-by-Wallet Rule That Changed Everything

Alongside the form itself, the IRS ended a practice most crypto tax software relied on for years.

Through 2024, many taxpayers used universal (pooled) accounting: treat all your holdings of a given token across every wallet and exchange as one pool, and apply FIFO or specific identification against that pool. Simple, and it usually produced favorable results.

As of January 1, 2025, that's over. Basis must be tracked wallet by wallet, account by account. When you sell 1 BTC on Kraken, you can only draw basis from BTC actually sitting in your Kraken account — not from the cheaper coins in your Ledger.

The IRS provided a one-time safe harbor letting taxpayers allocate their existing unused basis across wallets as of the start of 2025, but it required action at that time. If you never made that allocation, your position is weaker and you should reconstruct a reasonable per-wallet allocation now and document the methodology.

Practically, this means: your 1099-DA and your crypto tax software must agree on which wallet a lot came from. Mismatches here are the leading cause of numbers that don't reconcile.

What to Do With Your 1099-DA at Filing Time

The 1099-DA is an input document. It is not filed with your return — it feeds into forms that are.

1. Answer the digital asset question on Form 1040. It sits near the top of page one. If you sold, exchanged, or spent digital assets, the answer is yes. Receiving a 1099-DA and answering no is a needless red flag.
2. Report each disposition on Form 8949. Every sale becomes a row: description, date acquired, date sold, proceeds, basis, adjustment code, gain or loss. Our Form 8949 guide covers the mechanics line by line.
3. Use the right 8949 box. Since basis generally wasn't reported to the IRS for the first year, most crypto lands in Box B (short-term, basis not reported) or Box E (long-term, basis not reported), not Box A or D.
4. Fill in the basis the broker left blank. Enter your actual cost. When your figure differs from what the broker reported, you use adjustment code B and show the correction in the adjustment column rather than silently overwriting.
5. Total everything onto Schedule D, splitting short-term (held one year or less) from long-term.
6. Reconcile against the form before you file. Your total proceeds across all 8949 crypto rows should equal the total proceeds on your 1099-DA. If it doesn't, the IRS matching system will notice, and a CP2000 notice follows twelve to eighteen months later.

If you're importing into consumer tax software, our 1099-DA import walkthrough for Coinbase, Kraken, and Robinhood covers the platform-specific quirks.

One Rule That Still Doesn't Apply: Wash Sales

The wash sale rule under Section 1091 disallows a loss when you sell a security at a loss and buy it back within 30 days. Digital assets are property, not securities, so the wash sale rule does not currently apply to crypto.

That means you can sell BTC at a loss, harvest the deduction, and rebuy it minutes later — a move that would be disallowed with a stock. This is a genuine and meaningful advantage, and it's the main reason crypto tax-loss harvesting is worth doing deliberately in December.

Two cautions. First, this treatment has been targeted in multiple legislative proposals and could close with little notice; it is a rule to use now rather than plan around for five years. Second, it does not extend to crypto-adjacent securities — a spot bitcoin ETF is a security, so the wash sale rule applies to it normally, even though the underlying asset is bitcoin.

FAQ

What is Form 1099-DA used for?

It reports your sales and exchanges of digital assets to both you and the IRS. You use it to fill out Form 8949 and Schedule D, and the IRS uses it to check whether your return matches what your exchange reported.

When did Form 1099-DA start?

It applies to transactions occurring in calendar year 2025, with the first forms issued to taxpayers in early 2026. Cost basis reporting phases in a year later, starting with 2026 transactions.

Who has to send a 1099-DA?

Custodial digital asset brokers — centralized exchanges, brokerages with crypto arms, and custodial payment platforms. Self-custody wallets and DeFi protocols do not, following the 2025 repeal of the DeFi broker rule.

Why is the cost basis blank on my 1099-DA?

Either because basis reporting wasn't required in the first reporting year, or because the broker genuinely doesn't know — most commonly when you transferred the asset in from another wallet. You supply the correct basis yourself on Form 8949.

Do I still owe tax if I never received a 1099-DA?

Yes. The obligation to report gains has always existed independently of whether a form arrives. DEX trades, self-custody sales, and disposals on non-reporting platforms are all still taxable and still your responsibility.

Does a crypto-to-crypto trade go on the 1099-DA?

Yes. Swapping ETH for SOL is a disposition of ETH for tax purposes, and a custodial broker reports it as a sale at the fair market value received.

Is the 1099-DA the same as the 1099-B?

No. They're separate forms with different fields and different phase-in schedules, though they feed the same Form 8949 and Schedule D. If you hold stocks and crypto at the same firm you'll get both.

What if my 1099-DA is wrong?

Contact the broker and request a corrected form first. If they won't issue one, report the correct figures on Form 8949 using adjustment code B, and keep documentation of why the broker's number was wrong.

Bottom Line

Form 1099-DA closes the reporting gap that made crypto taxes an honor system. Starting with 2025 transactions, custodial brokers report your dispositions to the IRS, and starting with 2026 transactions they report your cost basis too.

The immediate risk isn't the form itself — it's the asymmetry in its first years. The IRS receives your proceeds with no basis attached, and absent your input, every dollar of proceeds looks like a dollar of gain. Your job is to fill in the basis the form left blank, keep the documentation that supports it, track it wallet by wallet, and make sure your total proceeds reconcile exactly to the form.

Do that and the 1099-DA is a convenience. Ignore it and it's a matching notice with interest attached.

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Reconciling a 1099-DA against a stack of broker PDFs? Try it on your 1099-B — we pull every transaction out of your brokerage PDF with proceeds, cost basis, dates, and adjustments intact, so the numbers you put on Form 8949 actually match what the IRS already has.