1099-DA Crypto Tax Form: Cost Basis Missing, DeFi Reporting Gaps Ahead of April 15

The IRS is now issuing the 1099-DA digital asset reporting form for 2025 activity, and it shows how much crypto each investor sold—but not the purchase price (cost basis). Tax liability hinges on sale price minus cost basis, yet 1099-DA currently provides only the sale side of the equation, creating mismatch risk during IRS automated matching and audits. Kent Miller Photography quotes Janna Scott, founder of DeFi Tax, who warns that many crypto tax tools cannot explain how numbers are calculated well enough to survive scrutiny. The article notes that cost basis reporting by brokers is scheduled later and may apply only to certain assets bought on/after Jan. 1, 2026 and still on-exchange; assets transferred out, moved between platforms, or held in self-custody may show no basis. Key coverage gap: the 1099-DA applies to centralized exchanges (Coinbase, Kraken, Gemini) and does not cover decentralized protocols, self-custody wallets, liquidity pools, token bridges, or cross-chain swaps. A planned expansion for DeFi reporting in 2027 was reportedly repealed. For users trading across both CEX and DeFi, the 1099-DA captures only exits, while DeFi “entry” events are invisible to traditional reporting. DeFi Tax claims it avoids CSV imports and instead reads transaction data directly from the blockchain to produce traceable, audit-ready figures. With the April 15 filing deadline approaching, the article advises traders to reconcile transactions across every exchange and wallet now, because being unable to explain reported numbers may increase enforcement and audit risk. Main trading takeaway: near-term volatility can rise as compliance-driven selling or “tax-loss harvesting” attempts emerge, but the core impact is procedural rather than market-structure changing.