The IRS's New 1099-DA Form Is Here: What It Means If You Get Paid in Crypto

The IRS has a new form built specifically for digital assets. Form 1099-DA, Digital Asset Proceeds From Broker Transactions, is the agency’s first dedicated crypto reporting form, and exchanges started sending them out in early 2026 for sales made in 2025. If any part of your income touches crypto, whether a client paid you in it or you sold some through an exchange, this form changes what shows up on your tax return and what doesn’t.

Who gets a 1099-DA

The form only comes from a broker: an exchange, a hosted wallet provider, or a similar platform that handled the transaction. The IRS’s own guidance on the form puts it plainly: “You’ll get a Form 1099-DA if you used a broker to affect” a sale, exchange, or transfer of digital assets, whether that was for another asset, for dollars, or for property and services.

A client who pays you crypto directly, wallet to wallet, with no exchange involved, does not go through a broker. No broker means no 1099-DA, not to you and not to the IRS. That gap matters more than it sounds, and it is the reason this form is worth reading past the headline.

What the form reports, and when

For 2025 transactions, brokers report gross proceeds only. Cost basis, what you originally paid for the asset, is not required on this first round of forms. Starting with sales made in 2026, brokers add cost basis to the form, and those forms reach you in early 2027.

Until the fuller version arrives, you are still the one who has to work out your own cost basis to file correctly. The IRS says this directly on the form’s guidance page: you must calculate basis before you file, form or no form.

The rule that doesn’t change

Here is the line that matters more than anything about rollout dates: “Whether or not you receive a Form 1099-DA, you must report all income, gains and losses from digital asset transactions on your federal income tax return.” That is the IRS’s own wording, and it is the same principle behind 1099-K and 1099-NEC. A form arriving does not create the tax obligation. A form not arriving does not remove it.

Where the paper trail runs out

For a sale through an exchange, this is a minor inconvenience at worst. The broker’s records exist whether or not you kept your own. For a client paying you directly in crypto, there is no broker record anywhere. The only account of what you were paid, when, and what it was worth at that moment is the one you kept yourself.

Scenario	Does a 1099-DA get issued	What proves the payment
You sell or trade crypto through an exchange	Yes, the exchange reports it	Exchange statement, plus your own records
A client pays you crypto directly	No, no broker exists to issue one	Your invoice and payment record only

That value at the moment of receipt is also your cost basis if you hold the crypto and sell it later. Reconstructing it months afterward from a wallet address and a hazy memory of the date is a bad way to spend an evening in April.

A BillyPaid statement of account keeps that record in one place: what you invoiced a client, when they paid, and the value at the time, whether the payment landed as dollars or crypto.