Crypto.com Tax Reporting: 1099-MISC, Earn Rewards, and the Visa Card Problem

Crypto.com is one of the easiest exchanges to use and one of the most painful ones to report. The combination of staking rewards, Earn yield, card cashback in CRO, and the Crypto.com Visa card that lets you spend directly — every swipe is a taxable disposition — creates a reporting load most users massively underestimate. Let's walk through exactly what you get from Crypto.com, what's missing, and how to file without triggering a CP2000.

What Crypto.com Actually Sends You

Crypto.com issues U.S. customers the following forms when they meet the thresholds:

• Form 1099-MISC — for total rewards income of $600 or more in a calendar year. This covers staking rewards, Crypto Earn (discontinued for U.S. users in 2024 but legacy balances still exist), CRO staking rewards, and referral bonuses. The threshold is cumulative across all reward categories.
• Form 1099-DA — starting with 2025 transactions (issued in early 2026), for gross proceeds of dispositions. Basis reporting phases in for 2026 transactions under §6045A.
• Form 1099-K — in the past, for high-volume users meeting the pre-2024 thresholds. The 1099-K pathway has largely been replaced by 1099-DA for crypto activity.

If you didn't meet the $600 threshold for 1099-MISC or the 1099-DA proceeds threshold, you still owe tax on everything. Not getting a form is not the same as not having taxable income. IRC §61 taxes all income from whatever source, forms or no forms.

Staking and Earn — Ordinary Income at Receipt

Under Revenue Ruling 2023-14, staking rewards are ordinary income at fair market value on the date the taxpayer gains dominion and control. For Crypto.com, that's the date the reward hits your account — whether or not you immediately move it. The FMV becomes your basis for any later capital gain or loss under §1012.

Crypto.com reports these rewards on 1099-MISC Box 3 (Other Income) if your total rewards exceed $600. Report the 1099-MISC amount on Schedule 1, Line 8, as "Other income." If you stake as a business — which is rare for retail users — it goes on Schedule C with §1402 self-employment tax attached. See our crypto mining self-employment tax article for the hobby-vs-business test; the same analysis applies.

The Crypto.com Visa Card: Every Swipe Is a Sale

This is the single most under-reported item we see. The Crypto.com Visa card lets you load crypto (or USD) and spend at merchants who accept Visa. When you spend crypto, you are disposing of property under Notice 2014-21 — exactly as if you sold it. The IRS does not distinguish between selling BTC on the Crypto.com exchange and swiping your card to buy coffee with BTC. Both are dispositions.

Worked Example

You bought 1 ETH in March 2024 at $3,200. In November 2025 you use your Crypto.com Visa to buy a $4,000 TV. ETH is at $4,000 that day. You load 1 ETH to the card, Crypto.com swaps it to USD, and the merchant is paid $4,000.

You just recognized $800 of short-term capital gain ($4,000 proceeds − $3,200 basis), held less than one year. That's reportable on Form 8949. If you did this thirty times in 2025, you have thirty Form 8949 rows. Every latte. Every Uber. Every trip to Target.

The 1099-DA for 2025 transactions will report these card spending events as proceeds if Crypto.com routes the card transaction through its exchange layer — and it does. Expect the 1099-DA to show card spending as individual line-item dispositions. AUR will match. If you don't report them, you'll get a notice.

CRO Cashback: Ordinary Income, Then Basis

Card cashback paid in CRO is ordinary income at FMV on the date credited. Most practitioners report this on Schedule 1 Line 8 alongside other rewards. When you later sell the CRO, your basis is the FMV on the credit date. Two taxable events per cashback: income at receipt, gain or loss at disposal.

For years when Crypto.com ran the card staking tiers (2020–2022, wound down in subsequent years), the CRO you staked to unlock tier benefits was not itself a taxable event on staking — but the rewards earned from staking it were ordinary income. Breaking the stake to access the tokens was also not taxable.

CSV Export Workflow

The cleanest way to prepare a Crypto.com return is to run both platforms — the App and the Exchange — and pull CSVs separately.

1. From the Crypto.com App, Transaction History → Export. Select full year. Export as CSV.
2. From the Crypto.com Exchange (separate login, separate account), Wallet → Export History. Select full year. Export as CSV.
3. Reconcile card transactions — card spend is on the App side; exchange trades on the Exchange side.
4. Feed both into a crypto tax tool like Koinly, CoinTracker, or TokenTax.
5. Cross-check against the 1099-MISC totals for rewards and the 1099-DA totals for dispositions.

If the tax tool says your rewards total is $2,300 and the 1099-MISC says $1,900, something is wrong. Common cause: the tool captured referral bonuses or promos that Crypto.com excluded from the 1099. Research the discrepancy before filing. The IRS will match the 1099 number and expect your return to include at least that much.

Crypto.com Wind-Down in Some U.S. States

Crypto.com has geo-restricted certain products over time (Earn, certain derivatives, some staking services) depending on state regulations. If your access changed mid-year, make sure you have full transaction records for the period before the shutdown. Once an account is restricted or closed, getting a full historical export becomes much harder. Export CSVs every quarter for anything you use actively.

DeFi Wallet: A Different Reporting Universe

The Crypto.com DeFi Wallet is a non-custodial wallet that is not subject to 1099-DA reporting — the statute applies to brokers, and a self-custody wallet provider is not a broker in the relevant sense. But the tax treatment of your DeFi activity is identical to the analysis on Ethereum tax problems: swaps are dispositions, liquidity provision is a disposition, yield claims are ordinary income. The absence of a 1099 does not change the tax treatment; it only changes who's going to find out about it.

Common Mistakes

• Ignoring card spending as taxable. Every swipe with crypto is a disposition. The 1099-DA will catch these starting with 2025.
• Not reporting rewards under $600. No 1099 does not mean no tax. Report all rewards.
• Missing CRO cashback income. The card rebate in CRO is ordinary income at FMV on the day credited.
• Double-counting when staking is unstaked. Unstaking CRO is not a taxable event. Only the rewards earned on the stake are income.
• Universal basis pooling across App and Exchange. Under Rev. Proc. 2024-28, wallet-by-wallet accounting is required starting 2025. The App and Exchange are separate accounts for this purpose.

Worked Example: A Full-Year Crypto.com User

2025 activity:

• Bought $12,000 of BTC and ETH throughout the year on the Exchange.
• Sold $8,500 worth at various times — $1,200 of net short-term gain.
• Earned $1,400 of CRO card cashback through the year.
• Earned $780 of staking rewards on miscellaneous coins.
• Used the Crypto.com Visa 47 times spending a mix of USD and crypto. 12 transactions were crypto spends totaling $4,800 in value, creating $340 of net gain.

Filing:

• Schedule 1 Line 8 — $2,180 of "Other Income" ($1,400 cashback + $780 staking). Matches 1099-MISC.
• Form 8949 Box B (2025 1099-DA proceeds, basis not reported in first year) — 47 rows for exchange dispositions, 12 rows for card dispositions. Total short-term gain $1,540.
• Schedule D — nets to $1,540 short-term gain.
• Form 1040 Line 7 — $1,540 capital gain.
• Form 1040 Line 8 — $2,180 other income from Schedule 1.

Related Reading

For other U.S. exchange reporting, see our walkthroughs on Binance.US tax reporting, Robinhood crypto tax, and PayPal crypto tax. For what's happening behind the scenes when the IRS serves those exchanges, see IRS John Doe summons. For the form where all of this lands, Form 8949 for crypto.