Kraken 1099-DA: What It Means and What to Fix

You got a 1099-DA from Kraken.

Maybe it arrived in your email, or you found it waiting in your account. Either way, you're now holding a new IRS form that reports your crypto sales from 2025, and before you hand it to your accountant or punch the numbers into TurboTax, there are a few things you need to understand.

The short version: your 1099-DA probably shows your proceeds correctly. But cost basis? Almost certainly wrong, or missing entirely. Filing without fixing that could mean paying thousands more in taxes than you actually owe.

When You'll Get Your Kraken 1099-DA

Kraken is required to send your 1099-DA by specific IRS deadlines:

• January 31 if boxes 8 and 10 on the form are blank
• February 15 if boxes 8 or 10 contain information (related to covered securities adjustments)

You can access it digitally inside your Kraken account. Log in and go to Settings → Documents or look for a Tax section depending on your account type. Kraken may also use a third-party tax document portal — if you received an email from a service like Broadridge or a similar document provider, that's legitimate.

If you traded in 2025 and haven't received a 1099-DA by mid-February, check your Kraken account directly. It should be there. If not, contact Kraken support. Don't file without it if you know it should exist.

For more on the 1099-DA form generally, see our full 1099-DA explainer.

What Your Kraken 1099-DA Shows

The 1099-DA reports information about digital asset disposals, sales, trades, and conversions that went through Kraken as a broker. The key fields you'll see:

• Gross proceeds: The dollar amount Kraken received when you sold or converted a digital asset
• Date of sale: When the transaction occurred
• Asset description: What was sold (Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc.)
• Cost basis: What you originally paid for the asset

The critical thing to understand for 2025: cost basis reporting is not yet required on 1099-DAs for most transactions. Exchanges have a phase-in period. For the first year of 1099-DA reporting, many boxes, including cost basis, may show $0 or be left blank.

That means your Kraken 1099-DA will tell the IRS exactly how much you received when you sold. It will not necessarily tell the IRS what you paid. And without cost basis, your gain looks much larger than it actually is.

For a full breakdown of every box on the form, see our complete 1099-DA guide.

The Cost Basis Problem

Even once cost basis reporting is fully phased in, Kraken can only report cost basis for assets it actually has records on, meaning assets you bought directly on Kraken and never moved anywhere else.

Say you bought 0.5 BTC for $15,000 on Coinbase back in 2021. Later, you transferred that Bitcoin to your Kraken account. In 2025, you sold it on Kraken for $22,000. Your actual capital gain is $7,000 ($22,000 proceeds minus $15,000 cost basis).

But Kraken doesn't know about the Coinbase purchase. It only sees the $22,000 sale. So on your 1099-DA, it reports $22,000 in proceeds and $0 (or blank) for cost basis.

If you file using only the 1099-DA numbers, the IRS sees $22,000 in proceeds and assumes $0 cost basis, meaning they think your entire $22,000 is taxable gain. You'd owe taxes on $22,000 instead of $7,000.

This isn't a Kraken error. It's a structural limitation of the current reporting system. The IRS knows this. But it's your responsibility to report the correct numbers using your actual records. You need to calculate your real cost basis and report it on Form 8949.

Common Issues with Kraken 1099-DAs

The cost basis gap isn't the only wrinkle. Kraken has platform-specific features that create additional complexity on your tax return.

Staking Rewards

Kraken was one of the first major US exchanges to offer staking at scale. If you staked ETH, SOL, DOT, or other assets through Kraken, you've been earning staking rewards, and those rewards are taxable income when you receive them.

Staking income is typically reported separately on a 1099-MISC, not the 1099-DA. Your 1099-DA covers disposals. But when you later sell staked assets, your cost basis for those specific tokens is the fair market value at the time you received them as a reward.

If you haven't been tracking the value of each staking reward at receipt, your cost basis calculation will be off. And because staked assets often accumulate in small drips over time, this can involve dozens or hundreds of individual cost basis lots.

Margin Trading and Futures

Kraken offers both margin trading and perpetual futures contracts. These have materially different tax treatment than spot trades.

Margin trades on Kraken function similarly to leveraged spot positions. Profits are still capital gains, but borrowing costs and interest add complexity. These may appear on your 1099-DA but with different characteristics than standard spot sales.

Kraken futures (available on Kraken Pro and the Kraken Futures platform) may qualify as Section 1256 contracts under US tax law. If they do, they get 60/40 treatment: 60% taxed as long-term gains, 40% as short-term, regardless of how long you held them. This is actually favorable compared to regular crypto treatment. But you need to verify whether your specific contracts qualify, and they may not appear on your 1099-DA at all, requiring separate reporting.

If you traded futures in any meaningful volume, consult a crypto-savvy tax professional before filing.

Kraken vs. Kraken Pro

Historically, Kraken operated two interfaces: the standard Kraken.com platform and Kraken Pro (previously known as Cryptowatch). Both fed into the same account, so your transaction history should be consolidated. But if you accessed both interfaces at different points, verify that your full trade history is captured. Download your complete CSV transaction history from Kraken and check that all trades appear.

OTC Desk Trades

High-volume Kraken users may have used the Kraken OTC desk for large block trades. These should be captured in your account history and reflected on your 1099-DA, but it's worth double-checking. OTC trades sometimes go through slightly different workflows and there's a chance of gaps in reporting.

Fiat Deposits and Withdrawals

Wire transfers, ACH deposits, and fiat withdrawals are not taxable events and should not appear on your 1099-DA. If you see what looks like a fiat transaction reported as a disposal, that's an error worth flagging. USD deposits and withdrawals are simply moving money. They don't create capital gains or losses.

What to Do Before Filing

Don't file until you've worked through these steps.

1. Log in to Kraken, go to Settings → Documents (or the Tax section), and download your 1099-DA. Save a copy.

2. Export your complete Kraken transaction history as a CSV. Do this for every year you've traded on Kraken, not just 2025. Cost basis calculations require the original purchase records, which may go back years.

3. For every asset you sold on Kraken in 2025, ask: did I buy this on Kraken, or did I transfer it from somewhere else? For transferred assets, you need the purchase records from the original platform.

4. Gather records from every other platform. If you've ever moved assets to Kraken from Coinbase, Gemini, a hardware wallet, or any DeFi protocol, you need transaction records from those sources too. Cost basis follows the asset, not the platform.

5. Calculate your actual cost basis using your full history. If you used multiple cost basis methods (FIFO, HIFO, specific ID), make sure you're being consistent with your accounting method for the year.

6. Report each sale on Form 8949 with the actual proceeds (which should match your 1099-DA) and your calculated cost basis. The difference is your capital gain or loss. Form 8949 totals flow through to Schedule D and then to your Form 1040.

7. Reconcile your Form 8949 totals against the 1099-DA. The IRS compares these. If they don't match, you need a clear reason why (errors on the form, OTC trades handled differently, etc.).

8. Report staking rewards as ordinary income for the year you received them, at the fair market value on receipt. Check whether Kraken sent you a 1099-MISC for this. If not, you're still required to report it.

How Moonscape Fixes This

Moonscape connects your Kraken account with every other platform where you've held or traded crypto, so your cost basis calculation is complete.

Import via Kraken API key or by uploading your CSV export. Moonscape pulls in your complete trade history, including staking rewards and any margin activity. From there, you connect your other platforms (Coinbase, Gemini, MetaMask, Ledger, Binance, and 300+ others) and it matches assets across platforms automatically. That Bitcoin you bought on Coinbase and transferred to Kraken gets the right cost basis, traced back to the original purchase.

Cost basis is calculated using your chosen accounting method (FIFO, HIFO, LIFO, or Specific ID) across your entire portfolio history. Staking rewards are assigned cost basis at fair market value on receipt. Then Moonscape cross-references its calculations against the proceeds on your Kraken 1099-DA, so you can see exactly where the numbers align and where there are gaps to investigate. When you're done, it produces a Form 8949 you can file directly or hand to your accountant.

You can connect Kraken and all your other accounts at moonscape.app.

Key Takeaways

• Your Kraken 1099-DA reports proceeds, not necessarily cost basis. For 2025, cost basis may be $0 or blank on the form. That doesn't mean your actual gain is that large.
• Transferred assets are the main risk. Any crypto you moved from another exchange or wallet before selling on Kraken needs cost basis sourced from the original purchase records.
• Staking rewards add complexity. Kraken staking income is taxable on receipt and creates cost basis for future sales. Check for a separate 1099-MISC.
• Futures and margin trades may have special tax treatment. Kraken Pro futures could qualify as Section 1256 contracts. Verify before filing.
• You must report on Form 8949 regardless. The 1099-DA is an information return. Your actual tax liability is calculated on Form 8949 using your real cost basis numbers.

The 1099-DA doesn't change the fundamental rule: you owe taxes on your actual gains, not the gross proceeds number on a form. Getting that right requires the full picture, every platform, every transfer, every purchase price.