Form 1099-DA: What Crypto Investors Need to Know for the 2026 Tax Year

Form 1099-DA is the new IRS form brokers use to report your digital asset sales, such as crypto, to you and the IRS. For sales made in 2025, it shows gross proceeds only. For sales made in 2026, brokers must also report cost basis for certain assets, which makes the form far more useful at tax time, but only if you understand what it does and does not cover.

What Form 1099-DA Reports

The IRS created Form 1099-DA so that custodial platforms, which the rules call "brokers," report digital asset dispositions the same way stock brokers report securities sales on Form 1099-B. A disposition includes selling crypto for dollars, swapping one coin for another, and spending crypto on goods or services. Per Coinbase's help center and the IRS form instructions, the form lists the asset, the date and time of the transaction, and the gross proceeds in dollars.

You get one only if you used a broker that holds your assets for you, such as a centralized exchange or a payment app. Transactions on a self-custody wallet or a decentralized exchange you control yourself generally do not generate a form, but they are still taxable and still reportable by you.

What Changed Between the 2025 and 2026 Forms

This is the part most investors miss. As summarized by Sovos and CoinTracking in their 2026 coverage, the two tax years work differently:

The catch is the word "covered." If you bought bitcoin in 2021 and sell it in 2026, the broker is not required to report your basis, so the form will show proceeds with a blank or incomplete basis. If you moved coins between platforms, the new broker may not know what you paid. In both cases the number on your 1099-DA is only half of the gain or loss calculation.

What to Do If You Don't Receive One

Not getting a 1099-DA does not mean you owe nothing. Taxable crypto sales are reportable whether or not any form arrives. Common reasons for a missing form include:

• You sold only through self-custody wallets or decentralized platforms.
• Your total sales were below the broker's reporting threshold, which the IRS instructions set for certain asset types.
• The platform has your old address or email, so the form went to the wrong place.

Start by logging in to each platform you used and checking its tax documents section. If a form should exist and does not, contact support and ask for a corrected or reissued copy. Then rebuild your history yourself from account statements and transaction exports.

Keeping Your Own Records to Match the Form

Treat the 1099-DA as a cross-check, not your source of truth. A simple routine works well:

1. Export the full transaction history from every exchange and wallet you used during the year, as CSV and PDF.
2. Record the purchase date, purchase price, and fees for every lot you sold.
3. Compare each sale in your records to the proceeds on the form. Fix discrepancies by contacting the broker, not by ignoring the difference.
4. Save everything in one folder, named by year and platform.

Many exchanges give you statements as PDFs. If you need to combine several of them into one file for your accountant, you can merge PDF files in your browser, and you can redact wallet addresses or account numbers before sharing them. Our guide to merging PDF files online walks through the steps.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Assuming proceeds equal profit

Gross proceeds are what you received, not what you earned. If you bought $4,000 of a coin and sold it for $5,000, the form shows $5,000. Your taxable gain is $1,000 before fees. Reporting the full proceeds as income would overstate your tax bill.

Forgetting transfers between platforms

Moving coins from one exchange to another is not a sale, but it can break the basis trail. The receiving broker may not know your original purchase price. Keep a record of each transfer, including the date and the wallet addresses involved, so you can prove the original basis later.

Ignoring small trades and swaps

Swapping one coin for another is a taxable disposition, even if you never touched dollars. A year of small swaps can produce hundreds of lines on a 1099-DA. Export the data early rather than reconstructing it in April.

Waiting for the form before you start

Brokers typically send forms early in the new year, which leaves little time before filing season. Collecting your own records in December means the form is a quick check instead of a scramble.

How This Fits Into Your Tax Return

Digital asset sales go on Form 8949 and then Schedule D, the same path as stock sales. For each sale, you report the date acquired, date sold, proceeds, and basis, then the resulting gain or loss. Short-term gains (held one year or less) are taxed as ordinary income. Long-term gains (held more than one year) generally get lower rates.

If your 1099-DA shows proceeds but a missing or wrong basis, you enter the correct basis from your own records on Form 8949 and note the adjustment. That is why complete records matter: the IRS receives the broker's version, and your return should reconcile to it or explain the difference.

PDF Editify has a ready-to-use Form 1099-DA template and a template for Form 8949. Open either one, type your figures directly into the fields, and download the completed PDF. You can browse more in our IRS tax forms library.

Filling In Tax PDFs Without a Subscription

Most people need to fill in crypto tax PDFs for a few weeks a year, not all year. Many editors charge a recurring fee for that. PDF Editify's One Week Plan is $3 one-time. It expires on its own, so there is nothing to cancel. If you do this every year, the Standard plan is $10 per month or $100 per year, and Lifetime starts at $99 one-time. You can compare the options on the pricing page. The workflow is the same either way: open the form at Fill PDF, complete the fields in your browser with no software to install, and download the result. Uploaded files are auto-deleted after processing.

For related information returns, see our guides to Form 1099-MISC and Form 1099-K.

If you only sold a little, the process is still worth doing carefully. A single misreported sale can trigger an IRS notice because the agency receives its own copy of every 1099-DA. Matching your return to the form, or documenting why it differs, is the simplest way to avoid a mismatch letter months later.

A Quick Year-End Checklist

• Download every 1099-DA from every platform by mid-February 2027 for 2026 sales.
• Check the proceeds against your own export for each sale.
• Fill in missing basis from your purchase records.
• Complete Form 8949 and Schedule D, or hand your organized records to a tax professional.
• Keep copies of everything for at least three years after filing.

This article is general information, not tax advice. Rules for digital assets are new and still evolving, so confirm details against the current IRS instructions for Form 1099-DA or with a qualified tax professional.