Form 1099-DA Explained: How to Check Your Crypto Tax Form

A graphic depiction of cryptocurrency transaction history on a translucent form.

What Your Business Needs to Know About the 1099-DA

Sometime early next year, a lot of business owners who never thought of themselves as crypto people will receive a tax form they've never seen before.

Say you run a five-person design studio. Two of your clients pay invoices in USDC, and you keep a little ETH in a wallet because a contractor once asked to be paid that way. You don't run a crypto company, but you're getting a 1099-DA anyway.

The 1099-DA is a new IRS form that was sent out for the first time earlier this year. It's specific to cryptocurrency, and it's where the platforms that handle your crypto report your sales to you and to the IRS.

Two things matter most in this coming year's 1099-DA filing cycle.

First, a common misconception: you don't fill this form out yourself. The exchange or payment processor that handled your crypto does. As a business owner, all you need to do is open it, check it against your own records, and make sure your tax return matches it.

Second, this year's 1099-DA (which will be sent out in early 2027) is more involved than last year's. The first version of the form only told the IRS how much crypto you sold. On the new version, brokers can also report what you paid for it, which means the IRS can see your profit.

Below, we cover whether your business will get a 1099-DA, how to read it, the mistakes businesses make during review, and how to prepare before next year so your form is accurate.

Will I get a 1099-DA?

Your business's 1099-DA won't come straight from the IRS. It'll arrive pre-filled from a broker, such as a licensed cryptocurrency exchange, wallet provider, or crypto payment processor.

Whether a form shows up at all mostly depends on how your company is set up:

C corporations usually won't get one. The IRS doesn't require brokers to report sales for C corps, as long as the broker can confirm the company isn't an S corporation, usually through a W-9.
S corporations, partnerships, and LLCs should expect one for every reportable sale involving cryptocurrency.

Most brokers deliver the form electronically, posting it to the tax documents section of your account and emailing you when it's ready. You'll only get a paper copy in the mail if you haven't agreed to electronic delivery. Expect it by mid-February. Brokers can also fold your crypto sales into a single consolidated tax statement with your other account activity, so it may not arrive as a standalone document.

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What's different about this year's 1099-DA

Every crypto sale comes down to two numbers: what you sold it for, and what you paid for it. Accountants call the second number your cost basis. The difference between the two is your gain, and the gain is what gets taxed.

Last year's form only had the first number. This year, brokers have to fill in the second one too, but only for crypto that checks every box on a short list:

You bought it in 2026 or later
You bought it on that broker's platform
It never left that account before you sold it

Deloitte's Jonathan Cutler and Seth Wilks told Thomson Reuters Checkpoint that only about 5% of a typical customer's transactions may qualify for full reporting this year. A big reason is that exchanges have no system for passing your purchase history to each other the way stock brokerages do. Move coins from one exchange to another, Cutler said, and "that breaks the chain."

Don't be thrown if one trade produces several forms, either. If you sell a batch of tokens bought at different times, the broker has to split the sale by when you bought each piece and whether it qualifies. One click on "sell" can mean three forms in February.

How to read your 1099-DA

You won't fill in any of the boxes on this form, but your accountant will copy numbers from them onto your business's tax return (Form 8949 and the Schedule D that goes with it).

Before that happens, someone needs to check the form line by line. The form has more than two dozen fields, but only some of them affect your tax bill. These are the ones to check:

Where to look	What it means
Boxes 1b, 1c, and 1e	The name of the crypto you sold, how many units left your account, and the date of the sale. Units are listed to 18 decimal places, so small amounts will appear even if your own records round them off.
Box 1d	The date you bought the crypto. Brokers fill this in only when they know it, which mostly means you bought it on their platform in 2026 or later. It may also be blank if the units you sold were bought on different dates.
Box 1f	How much you got for the sale, after the broker subtracts its fees. This number goes to the IRS in every case, and it's the one the IRS will compare against your return.
Box 1g	What you paid for the crypto. A blank means the broker didn't have that information, so the cost has to come from your own records. A zero means the broker is telling the IRS you paid nothing, so make sure that's true.
Box 2	If checked, the broker sent the cost in box 1g to the IRS. If that number is wrong, ask the broker for a corrected form. Otherwise you'll have to explain the difference on your return.
Box 6	Whether the gain or loss is short-term (held a year or less) or long-term (held more than a year). If "Ordinary" is also checked, different tax rules may apply, which brokers flag whenever a sale wasn't priced in U.S. dollars.
Box 8	If checked, you told the broker which units to sell and it followed those instructions. The broker can use your purchase records to pick the units, but it can't report the cost you gave it.
Box 9	If checked, the broker wasn't required to report what you paid. This usually means the crypto was bought before 2026 or moved in from another account. Any cost the broker shows anyway is voluntary, so check it against your records.
Boxes 11a and 11b	If 11a is checked, box 1f is one total covering a full year of stablecoin sales, and 11b shows how many transactions went into it. Dates and costs are left blank on purpose.
Boxes 12a and 12b	How many of the units you sold were transferred into the account from somewhere else, and the date they arrived. The broker doesn't know what you paid for those units, so that cost comes from your records.

How many of the units you sold were transferred into the account from somewhere else, and the date they arrived. The broker doesn't know what you paid for those units, so that cost comes from your records.

Where businesses may get tripped up with the 1099-DA

The 1099-DA is modeled on the form stock brokerages send, which assumes you bought and sold in the same account. Businesses rarely use crypto that way. They get paid in it, cash it out, and move it between wallets and exchanges. These are the mistakes businesses most often make with a 1099-DA, along with the box on the form where you can spot each one.

Paying tax twice on crypto you were paid in

Say a client pays you 2 ETH in March, worth $6,000 that day. That $6,000 is business income, booked like any other invoice. In September you sell the ETH for $6,400. Your 1099-DA shows $6,400 in proceeds and a blank cost, because the coins came in from your wallet. Your real taxable gain is $400. Copy the form as written and you pay tax on $6,400, on top of the tax you already paid on the $6,000 as income. Where it shows up: a blank box 1g, with the transfer-in recorded in boxes 12a and 12b.

Assuming stablecoin conversions aren't sales

Turning USDC into dollars counts as a sale, even when you make nothing on it. The good news is that brokers get a shortcut. If your stablecoin cash-outs total $10,000 or less for the year, the broker doesn't have to report them at all. Above that, a broker using the shortcut sends one summary form per coin with a total and a transaction count. Either way, your books still need the details. Where it shows up: a checked box 11a, with the transaction count in box 11b.

Managing records when you move crypto between accounts

When you move crypto from one exchange or wallet to another, your purchase history doesn't go with it. The new broker can see the coins arrive, but not what you paid for them. When you sell, it reports the sale with no cost, and that number has to come from your own records.

Those records also have to be kept separately for each account. Since January 1, 2025, the IRS has required businesses and individuals to track the cost of their crypto account by account instead of treating everything they hold as one pool. If you bought ETH at different prices on two exchanges, the coins on each exchange carry their own cost. Where it shows up: boxes 12a and 12b, usually with box 9 checked.

Selling your oldest coins by default

If you don't tell your broker which coins to sell before a trade, the IRS instructions direct it to report the sale as your oldest coins first. If prices have climbed since then, those are usually the ones you paid least for, which means the biggest taxable gain. Where it shows up: box 1d, the date acquired. Box 8 is checked when the broker followed your instructions on which coins to sell.

Forgetting to report staking and lending income

The 1099-DA only covers sales. Some crypto activity earns income without selling anything, and the form leaves that income out.

The most common example is staking: locking up crypto like ETH to help run a blockchain network in exchange for new coins as a reward. The IRS instructions tell brokers not to report staking rewards on the 1099-DA. Under IRS Notice 2024-57, brokers also don't have to report crypto lending or liquidity pool transactions for now.

The income is still taxable. The IRS treats staking rewards as income in the year you receive them, at their dollar value that day. If your business stakes crypto or lends it out for a return, those earnings have to come from your own records. Where it shows up: nowhere on the form.

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Your business’s to-do list before next year

The 1099-DA for 2026 will cover sales your business has already made or will make in the next few months. These steps make that form more accurate, and make it easier to check against your records when it arrives.

List every account that holds your company's crypto. Include exchanges, payment processors, and any wallets your business controls. Each broker on the list may send its own 1099-DA, and each account needs its own cost records under the account-by-account rule.
Give each broker an up-to-date W-9. The W-9 tells the broker what kind of entity you are, which determines whether a C corporation gets a form at all. If a broker doesn't have your tax ID, it may have to withhold part of your sale proceeds for the IRS, which would appear in box 4.
Tell each broker which coins to sell before you sell them. Without instructions, the broker reports your oldest coins as sold first, which can mean a larger taxable gain. Box 8 shows whether the broker followed your instructions.
Buy and sell in the same account where you can. Crypto bought on a platform in 2026 and sold from that same account is the only kind whose cost will appear in box 1g this year.
Record what you paid for everything else. For crypto bought before 2026 or moved between accounts, write down the purchase date, the price, and each transfer since. You'll need those figures wherever box 1g is blank.
Book crypto payments at their dollar value on the day they arrive. That value is both your income from the payment and your cost when you sell, as in the ETH example above.
Compare your 2025 1099-DA to your 2025 tax return. The IRS matches the proceeds on these forms against what you reported. If a sale on the form is missing from your return, finding it now gives you time to amend before the IRS asks about it.

Slash: A simpler way to get paid in crypto

Most of the work in this article comes from holding crypto after you've been paid in it. Every coin you keep needs a record of what it was worth when it arrived, and that record gets harder to follow each time the coin moves to a new account.

Slash removes that complexity.⁴ Your clients can pay you in USDC or USDT on any of 15 blockchains, and the payment arrives in your Slash account as U.S. dollars, so there are no tokens to keep track of or sell off later.¹ You can include cryptocurrency as a payment option on your invoices, so your customers and partners get an easy-to-use payment link without having to copy in your wallet address details by hand.

That keeps the tax side simple as well. Your income is the dollar amount you received, and because the conversion happens when you're paid, there's essentially no gain to report on it. If your conversions add up to more than $10,000 in a year, you may receive a 1099-DA that reports them as a single total for each stablecoin, and that total will already line up with your books.

Those payments also sync to QuickBooks Online, Xero, Sage Intacct, NetSuite, and DualEntry, so your accountant has a complete record well before any forms show up. Your clients get to pay in crypto, and your books stay up to date.