- Custodial brokers have reported gross proceeds since 1 Jan 2025. What changes for 2026 transactions is cost basis. “Covered” is reported to require acquisition in that broker’s own account, so a transferred-in coin is noncovered and a blank basis box is the expected output.
- Sources we can reach conflict on whether “covered” means acquired from 2025 or 2026. That decides whether an empty basis box is a defect or the expected output, so check the current form instructions.
- The regime is custodial only. It does not reach DeFi, non-custodial wallets, wrapping, liquidity pools, lending or non-custodial staking — the decentralised-front-end rule was repealed in April 2025.
- No form? Report on Form 8949 in the not-reported category (box C short-term / box F long-term on the current layout) and supply basis yourself. Verify the letters against this year’s instructions.
- A wrong basis figure is ordinary, not rare: transfers in, wallet moves, wrapping and bridging all break it — and reporting is per account, so a pooled average will not match.
- Deadlines were reportedly 17 Feb 2026 (recipient) and 31 Mar 2026 (e-file), and major exchanges are reported to have missed them. “I got nothing” is not evidence nothing was reportable.
- It changes reporting, not character. Crypto stays outside §1091; H.R. 9172 is a bill, not law.
Two things change for the return you file on 2026 transactions, and they pull in opposite directions. Your custodial exchange now has to put a cost basis figure on Form 1099-DA, where before it reported only proceeds. And your on-chain activity still reports nothing at all.
So for the first time, an active trader who uses both gets a form with a number on it that disagrees with their own ledger — and no form for the half of their activity the regime cannot see. That reconciliation is new this season, and it is the whole subject of this page.
Under IRC §61 income is reportable whether or not an information return exists. A missing 1099-DA changes your evidence, not your liability — and a 1099-DA with the wrong basis does not become right because it was filed. Your records have to survive the form, not be replaced by it.
What changed for 2026, stated precisely
Custodial brokers have reported gross proceeds on Form 1099-DA for sales since 1 January 2025. For 2026 transactions cost basis appears on the form for covered assets. The phase-in sits in the reporting regulations themselves — the separate relief that applied to 2025 is reported to have been good-faith penalty relief for brokers, not a suspension of the duty to report, so “the rules were waived” is the wrong mental model for either year.
One thing we cannot resolve, and will not paper over. The sources we can reach conflict on what “covered” means: some describe covered assets as those acquired from 1 January 2025, others as those acquired from 1 January 2026. Those readings move different positions in your account:
- If covered means acquired 2025+, a coin you bought in early 2025 and sell in 2026 arrives with a basis figure, and you need to check it.
- If covered means acquired 2026+, that same coin reports proceeds only, and a blank basis box is correct rather than an error to chase.
- Where the weight of what we can reach now sits. Most of the secondary sources describe covered assets as those acquired in that broker’s own account on or after 1 January 2026 — which makes anything transferred in from elsewhere noncovered, with no basis figure expected on it at all. That reading also explains the basis gap described further down this page instead of treating it as a defect. We record the convergence and still do not treat the point as settled: these are commercial summaries, they conflict with each other on related details such as which notice extended which relief, and the form’s own instructions are the only thing that resolves it.
The difference decides whether an empty box is a defect or the expected output. The current Form 1099-DA instructions settle it; a secondary summary does not, and we are not going to guess which reading is right.
What Form 1099-DA does not reach
The regime is custodial. A platform that holds your assets and can see both sides of your trade is in scope. A protocol you interact with from your own wallet is not.
Specifically outside it: DeFi protocol activity, non-custodial wallet transactions, wrapping and unwrapping, liquidity-pool positions, lending, and staking through non-custodial protocols. The rule that would have pulled decentralised front ends into broker reporting was repealed by a Congressional Review Act resolution signed in April 2025, so the absence of a form on that side became more certain, not less.
That is why a sentence like “exchanges now report everything” is wrong in a way that matters. For a trader whose volume sits on perpetual venues or in pools, the form may cover a minority of their year. Our perpetual futures and dYdX pages carry the venue-side detail.
How to report a disposal when no 1099-DA arrived
This is the mechanical question the guidance pages tend to skip. You report it anyway, on Form 8949, and the part that trips people is which box to check.
Form 8949 separates transactions by whether they were reported to the IRS on an information return and whether basis was reported with them. A disposal with no 1099-DA at all belongs in the not-reported category — box C for short-term, box F for long-term on the current form layout. Where a form was received but basis was not reported, the transaction goes in the basis-not-reported category instead, and you supply the basis yourself.
Check the box letters against the current year's Form 8949 and its instructions before you file. The categories are stable in substance — reported-with-basis, reported-without-basis, not-reported-at-all — but we are describing the form's structure rather than quoting a layout we have read for this tax year, and some commentary refers to these categories by other letters.
The two ways this goes wrong are mirror images. Reporting the disposal and forgetting the income happens when tokens arrived as a reward or payment: you report the sale against a basis you never established and overstate the gain, or worse, against zero basis. Reporting the income and forgetting the disposal happens when you took the income into account correctly and then never reported the later sale at all. The fix for both is the same record: fair market value and date at receipt.
When the basis on the form is wrong
A custodial broker knows only what happened on its own books. Several ordinary things put its basis figure out of step with reality:
- You transferred the asset in. The receiving platform may have no acquisition price for it, or may hold a transfer-in date rather than your actual purchase date.
- The asset moved through a wallet. Off-platform history is invisible to the broker by construction.
- It was wrapped, bridged or swapped on-chain before arriving.
- You hold the same asset in several places. The regime reports per account, so a figure that is right for one account can be wrong for your overall position.
That last point is the habit-breaker. If you have been tracking a single pooled average across every venue, the form will not match and the mismatch is not an error on either side — it is two different accounting perimeters. Decide your method, document it, and apply it consistently. Our crypto tax calculator is a quick way to sanity-check a reconstructed basis before you commit to it.
Where your figure and the broker's disagree and you are confident in yours, you report the correct figure and keep the evidence. The form is a third party's assertion, not a determination.
Your exchange sent nothing, or sent it late
The first season's deadlines were reportedly 17 February 2026 to furnish statements to recipients and 31 March 2026 to e-file with the IRS, and several major exchanges are reported to have missed them.
So “I never received one” is a common fact pattern this year rather than evidence that nothing was reportable. Two practical consequences: a form may be filed with the IRS that you never saw, which is an argument for checking the platform's tax-documents section rather than only your inbox; and a late form may arrive after you file, which is an argument for building the return from your own records so a late arrival is a reconciliation rather than an amendment.
What Form 1099-DA does not change
- Character. Reporting is not characterisation. Whether a disposal is capital or ordinary, short or long, is unaffected by which box a broker filled in.
- Wash sales. Crypto remains outside §1091, which applies to stock and securities. OBBBA declined to extend it to digital assets. H.R. 9172, introduced 8 June 2026, is a bill that would extend wash-sale treatment to digital assets — it is not law, and nothing on this page assumes it passes. See the wash sale rule.
- Foreign reporting. FBAR and Form 8938 obligations run on their own tests and are not satisfied or triggered by a 1099-DA. See crypto taxes.
- Tokenized equities. A token tracking a share raises a different set of questions, and on at least one platform the on-chain leg is reported not to appear on the 1099-DA its crypto arm issues. See tokenized stock taxes.
What to keep
- Acquisition date and cost for every lot, including assets that arrived by transfer, reward, airdrop or payment — those are the ones with no broker record.
- Every transfer between platforms and wallets, with date, asset, quantity and the fee. A transfer is not a disposal, but it is what breaks the broker's basis.
- Fair market value and date at receipt for anything that arrived as income.
- The 1099-DA itself, and your reconciliation to it — the working, not just the conclusion.
- Exports taken on a schedule, not at filing. Histories are commonly windowed and exports commonly row-capped; the data you need in April is the data you pulled in October.
What we are not asserting
Outbound access to irs.gov and to the form instructions is blocked from the environment this page was researched in. The structure and effect of the provisions and forms named here are consistently identified across independent professional sources, which is why we are willing to name them. No statutory, regulatory or form wording on this page is quoted as though we had read it, and where exact wording would have to carry the argument we describe the structure instead and tell you to check the current instructions.
We are specifically not asserting: which acquisition-date cutoff defines a covered asset; the exact box lettering on the current Form 8949; that any named platform did or did not meet a filing deadline; that any particular broker's basis figure is wrong; or that any date or threshold on this page is current. Where this page says “reported”, that means secondary sources say it and we could not verify it against first-party documentation.
Where this fits
- Crypto taxes — the hub: property treatment, staking, DeFi and foreign reporting.
- Perpetual futures taxes — the venue side, where no form exists at all.
- dYdX taxes — the deepest treatment of building records from chain data.
- Tokenized stock taxes — tokens tracking shares, and why the on-chain leg can fall outside the form.
- The wash sale rule — what §1091 does and does not reach.
Form says one basis, your records say another?
That reconciliation is new this filing season, and it is the kind of thing worth getting right once rather than every April. A specialist who files trader returns can work through the actual statements.
Get a free tax snapshot →Frequently Asked Questions
What changed about Form 1099-DA for 2026?
Cost basis. Custodial brokers have reported gross proceeds on Form 1099-DA for sales since 1 January 2025; for 2026 transactions basis appears on the form for covered assets, which are reported to be those acquired in that broker’s own account. Note that the sources we can reach conflict on whether covered means assets acquired from 2025 or from 2026, which decides whether an empty basis box is a defect or the expected output. Check the current Form 1099-DA instructions.
Does Form 1099-DA cover DeFi and my own wallet?
No. The regime is custodial. It does not cover DeFi protocol activity, non-custodial wallet transactions, wrapping, liquidity-pool positions, lending or non-custodial staking. The rule that would have pulled decentralised front ends into broker reporting was repealed by a Congressional Review Act resolution signed in April 2025, so the absence of a form on that side became more certain rather than less.
How do I report a crypto sale if I never got a 1099-DA?
On Form 8949, in the not-reported-to-the-IRS category, and you supply the basis yourself. On the current form layout that is box C for short-term and box F for long-term; where a form was received but basis was not reported, the transaction goes in the basis-not-reported category instead. Check the box letters against the current year's Form 8949 instructions before filing, because we are describing the form's structure rather than quoting a layout we have read for this tax year.
The basis on my 1099-DA is wrong. What do I do?
Report the correct figure and keep the evidence and the working. A custodial broker knows only its own books, so a transfer in, an off-platform wallet move, a wrap or a bridge will all put its figure out of step. Reporting is also per account, so a figure that is right for one account can be wrong for your overall position if you have been tracking a single pooled average. The form is a third party's assertion, not a determination.
My exchange never sent a 1099-DA. Does that mean I owe nothing?
No. Under IRC Section 61 income is reportable whether or not an information return exists, so a missing form changes your evidence rather than your liability. It is also a common fact pattern this year: the first season's deadlines were reportedly 17 February 2026 to furnish recipient statements and 31 March 2026 to e-file, and several major exchanges are reported to have missed them. Check the platform's tax-documents section rather than only your inbox, because a form may have been filed that you never saw.
Does Form 1099-DA mean wash sale rules now apply to crypto?
No. Reporting is not characterisation. Crypto remains outside Section 1091, which applies to stock and securities, and OBBBA declined to extend it to digital assets. H.R. 9172, introduced on 8 June 2026, is a bill that would extend wash-sale treatment to digital assets; it is not law.
Do I still need my own records now that brokers report basis?
More than before, not less. The form covers only custodial activity, its basis figure can be wrong for ordinary reasons, and it reports per account rather than across your whole position. Build the return from your own records so that a late or incorrect form is a reconciliation rather than an amendment, and keep the working rather than only the conclusion.
Does a 1099-DA affect my FBAR or Form 8938 obligations?
No. Foreign reporting runs on its own tests and is neither satisfied nor triggered by receiving a 1099-DA. Those obligations turn on the accounts and assets you hold and where they are held.