Form 1099-DA Instructions for Tax Year 2026: A Complete Guide

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If you handle cryptocurrency, NFTs, or other digital asset transactions, whether for your own business or on behalf of clients, tax year 2026 brings a real shift in reporting. The transition period is over. The IRS has finalized its instructions for Form 1099-DA, Digital Asset Proceeds From Broker Transactions, and they’re now in effect for 2026 and beyond. Here’s what changed from the 2025 transition rules and what you need in place before filing season arrives.

What Is Form 1099-DA?

Created by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, Form 1099-DA gives the IRS and taxpayers better visibility into digital asset transactions. Brokers use it to report the sale, exchange, or disposition of digital assets, including cryptocurrency, stablecoins, and NFTs, on a per-transaction basis, similar to how Form 1099-B reports securities sales, rather than as an annual aggregate.

Why Tax Year 2026 Is a Turning Point

Tax year 2025 was a transition period: brokers only had to report gross proceeds, basis reporting stayed optional, and penalty relief covered good-faith errors. That relief ended when 2026 began. Under the finalized rules:

• Brokers must report gross proceeds for all digital asset sales, no exceptions.
• Basis reporting is now mandatory for covered securities, generally assets acquired on or after January 1, 2026, and held in broker custody.
• Basis reporting stays voluntary for noncovered securities: assets acquired before that date, assets acquired elsewhere and later transferred in, or holdings in certain exempt accounts. Brokers can still check the box, but there’s no penalty for leaving it blank.

One thing worth flagging: transferring a digital asset to a new broker breaks the basis “chain.” There’s no exception to letting a transfer statement carry cost basis along with it, so the receiving broker has to treat the transferred asset as noncovered.

Who Must File

You’re a broker for these purposes if, in the ordinary course of business, you stand ready to effect digital asset sales on behalf of others. That generally covers:

• Custodial cryptocurrency exchanges
• Hosted wallet providers
• Digital asset payment processors (PDAPs)
• Certain crypto ATM operators

The IRS finalized rules sweeping non-custodial DeFi platforms into broker status in late 2024, but Congress repealed them via a Congressional Review Act resolution signed into law in April 2025.

De Minimis Exceptions

A few thresholds mean you don’t need to report at all:

• PDAP sales of $600 or less per customer per year
• Qualifying stablecoin sales of $10,000 or less per year
• Specified NFT sales of $600 or less per year

These figures are set directly by Treasury regulations, not adjusted annually, so they won’t drift the way penalty amounts do below. They’d only change with new regulations, so it’s still worth a quick check against current instructions before you rely on them.

Key Filing Deadlines for Tax Year 2026

Deadlines follow a predictable pattern year to year:

• Recipient copies: same special deadline as Form 1099-B, generally February 15, bumped to the next business day if it falls on a weekend or holiday. For 2026 returns (filed in 2027): February 16, 2027.
• IRS paper filing: generally March 1, which lands on March 1, 2027, for this cycle.
• IRS e-filing: generally March 31, which lands on March 31, 2027.

Since exact dates shift slightly around weekends and holidays, confirm the current-year date on the IRS General Instructions for Certain Information Returns before relying on it.

Need more time? Form 8809 gets you an automatic IRS filing extension; Form 15397 extends the recipient furnishing deadline.

Penalties for Missing the Mark

Late or incorrect filings carry the same tiered penalty structure as other information returns, adjusted for inflation most years. These are the figures for returns filed in 2027, so check current-year numbers before budgeting around them:

• $60/return if corrected within 30 days of the due date
• $130/return if corrected after 30 days but before August 1
• $340/return if you miss the deadline and don’t correct in time (the most common scenario for late filers)
• $690/return, or 5% of the unreported amount if greater, for intentional disregard

Across a full client base, these add up fast.

Ongoing Compliance Checklist

Basis and classification errors compound the longer they sit undetected, so build a recurring audit into your workflow rather than a one-time check before filing season:

• Confirm acquisition dates are logged correctly at point of sale
• Flag assets transferred in from other custodians as noncovered, since basis doesn’t carry over automatically
• Spot-check that your pipeline classifies covered vs. noncovered status at the transaction level

Catch gaps early, and you’ll have far less transaction history to reconcile by hand later.

File with Confidence Using TaxBandits

Form 1099-DA’s transaction-level detail and new basis requirements make accurate, on-time filing essential. Our Form 1099-DA e-filing comes with built-in error checks, bulk upload for high-volume filers, and automatic recipient delivery, so you can hit IRS deadlines without the last-minute scramble.