Form 1099-DA is the IRS information return a digital asset broker files to report a customer's sales and exchanges of digital assets. One copy goes to the customer and one to the IRS. It shows what was sold, when, the gross proceeds, and, where the rules require it, the cost basis of the units sold.
The broker digital asset reporting rules were finalised in 2024 in Treasury Decision 10000, which added digital assets to Regulations section 1.6045-1. A broker that holds customers' digital assets and effects sales for them files a Form 1099-DA for each sale. A sale is defined broadly: a disposal for cash, an exchange of one digital asset for another, and a payment in digital assets for property or services that the broker processes all count. Custodial exchanges are the main filers. A self-custody wallet, a DeFi protocol and a validator do not file the form, so activity there never appears on it.
The form is phased in. For sales on or after January 1, 2025, brokers report gross proceeds. For sales on or after January 1, 2026, they also report cost basis, but only for covered digital assets, meaning units acquired in the customer's account at that broker on or after January 1, 2026. Everything else is a noncovered digital asset and the basis field may be blank.
Each form is specific to one broker and one account. An investor with three exchange accounts receives forms from each, and units moved between them appear as a sale at one broker with no acquisition record at the other. The broker reports what it saw in its own books, nothing more.
Selling 0.5 BTC for US dollars on an exchange produces a 1099-DA line with the proceeds. Swapping ETH for SOL on the same exchange also produces a line, with proceeds equal to the fair market value of the SOL received, because an exchange of one digital asset for another is a sale. Swapping the same ETH for SOL in a self-custody wallet through a decentralised exchange produces no form at all. Staking rewards credited by the exchange are income, not a sale, and are not reported on Form 1099-DA even though the rewards are taxable.
For each sale the form reports the digital asset, the units sold, the date sold and the gross proceeds after the transaction costs the broker allocates to that sale. From 2026, for covered units, it also reports the date acquired, the cost basis and whether the gain or loss is short-term or long-term. The form indicates whether basis was reported to the IRS, and that indicator decides which box the sale belongs in on Form 8949.
The form does not report income such as staking rewards or airdrops, the basis of noncovered units, transfers between wallets, or anything that happened outside that broker. It is not a tax computation. Gain or loss is worked out by the taxpayer on Form 8949 and Schedule D from the complete transaction history, which is where Form 1099-DA and Form 8949 connect.
The IRS matches the broker's copy against the return. A proceeds figure with no basis reads as gain in full until the return supplies the basis, and a sale that the return omits reads as unreported income. Both are resolved by 1099-DA reconciliation before filing, not after a notice arrives.
A Form 1099-DA shows $80,000 of proceeds on BTC and a blank basis field, because the BTC was bought in 2021 and transferred into the exchange. The taxpayer copies the form as it stands, enters zero basis, and reports the full $80,000 as gain on units that cost $45,000. The broker's blank field was correct under the rules; treating it as zero was not.
Read our 1099-DA accounting and cost basis reconciliation
CountDeFi reconciles Form 1099-DA against your complete transaction history, including proceeds tie-outs, missing basis on transferred-in units and Form 8949 preparation. See pricing.
