Coinbase 1099-DA: what the 2025 form showed and left blank

What arrived

The first Form 1099-DA covered sales made in 2025. Coinbase’s own tax page says who gets one: a US customer with gross proceeds from sales or exchanges of crypto assets [6]. Brokers had until February 17, 2026 to furnish those statements [3].

Mine was a download from the tax center, and it was short. Most of the page is boxes, and most of the boxes were blank.

Here’s the thing to hold on to before reading any box. The form reports what Coinbase did, at Coinbase, for one account. The regulations behind it apply to sales of digital assets on or after January 1, 2025 [2], and Coinbase says it reports gross proceeds to the IRS from that date [5]. Nothing on the form knows about a wallet, a dead exchange, or a coin that never left a hardware device.

So I read it the way I read any receipt. What does it claim to know, and what does it admit it does not?

What it got right

Box 1f is the number that matters, and the instructions tell the broker to reduce it by the transaction costs of the sale [1]. Coinbase says the same thing in its own words: US trading fees are included in cost basis and subtracted from proceeds [6]. So the proceeds on the form were already net of the fee. That is the number to check against the account’s own export, line by line.

Box 1e, the date sold, and box 1c, the units to 18 decimal places, come straight from the trade record [1]. Box 6 says whether the broker calls the gain or loss short-term or long-term, and the letter in the checkbox at the top says which part of Form 8949 the sale belongs on [1]. On a coin bought at Coinbase and sold at Coinbase, those boxes told the whole story.

The form did what a broker form can do. It reported what happened inside one account, with the fees handled the way the instructions say. For that kind of sale, the form is most of the work.

What it could not know

For the 2025 tax year, the form carried proceeds and no basis. Coinbase’s page for tax professionals says basis reporting starts with tax year 2026, and only for covered digital assets [5]. The regulations define that narrowly: a broker reports basis only for an asset bought from, and kept with, the same broker on or after January 1, 2026 [2]. So box 1g, cost or other basis, was blank, and box 9 was checked to say the asset was a noncovered security [1].

That is the part the form cannot know, and it says so in its own boxes.

A coin moved in from a wallet shows up only as boxes 12a and 12b, the units and the date that came in [1]. Coinbase goes one step further. If it does not receive acquisition information for a transferred-in asset, it treats those units as acquired on the date and time of the transfer [5]. To the broker, a coin bought years ago and moved in later reads like a coin bought on the day it arrived.

Two more gaps, both stated by Coinbase. Trades on a decentralized exchange are not on the form at all, because they happen off the platform in a self-custodial wallet [6] [5]. And Coinbase Taxes covers Coinbase.com only. It does not include Coinbase Pro, which was discontinued in December 2023, or Coinbase Wallet activity [6].

One line for the first filing season. Notice 2024-56 said the IRS would not penalize a broker that made a good-faith effort on the 2025 forms, and that no backup withholding was required on 2025 sales [4]. That relief was for the broker. The holder’s return had no such cushion, and a thin first form is still the holder’s problem to fill in.

What that means for dead bags

Here’s the problem for anyone who held through a rug. The token was bought somewhere else, or years before, or both. If it was sold at Coinbase for dust, box 1f shows the few cents of proceeds, box 9 is checked, and box 1g is empty [1]. The loss is basis minus proceeds, and the basis is the one number the form never had.

That number comes from records: a dated export, a chain history, a price from a named source. The sale goes on Form 8949 under box H or box K, the boxes for a 1099-DA sale where basis was not reported to the IRS, with the basis supplied in column (e) [7]. When the token still sits in a wallet, nothing goes anywhere. No sale, no form, no loss the IRS has been told about.

Coinbase also stopped issuing Form 8949 through its retail tax center from tax year 2025 [6]. The gain and loss report is still there, and tax software can build the form from it, but the form itself is the holder’s to file. The 1099-DA guide walks every box, and the cost-basis guide covers rebuilding the number the form left blank. The Coinbase cost-basis guide lists which Coinbase documents and records hold it.

The receipt

What the first form showed: proceeds, dates, units, fees already netted, and a checkbox admitting it did not know the basis. What it could not show: anything that happened before the coin reached the account. That is not a defect in the form. It is the form working the way the instructions describe it.

For a holder with dead bags, the lesson is dull and useful. The broker’s form is the IRS’s copy of the proceeds. The basis is yours to prove, and the receipts for it have to come from somewhere else. A loss you can’t document is a loss you can’t deduct.