- For financial year 2025-26 (assessment year 2026-27), individuals without a tax audit had to file by 31 July 2026. Taxpayers with a tax audit, including companies, now have until 21 November 2026 after a CBDT extension.
- Every transfer of crypto goes in Schedule VDA of the return, with dates, cost and sale value. ITR-1 and ITR-4 cannot be used if you have VDA income taxed at 30%.
- A belated return for 2025-26 can be filed until 31 December 2026. A revised return can now be filed up to 12 months after the year, with a fee after 9 months.
- The tax department matches the 1% TDS that exchanges report with your return. It sent 44,057 messages to taxpayers who did not report VDA transactions in Schedule VDA.
- From 1 April 2026, crypto providers must report crypto-asset transactions to the tax department, with penalties of ₹200 a day for late statements.
This page covers when and how to report crypto to the Income Tax Department. How the tax is calculated is on personal tax and business tax. It is general information, not tax advice; the dates the department publishes for your case always come first.
Deadline calendar
The dates below are for financial year 2025-26 (1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026), which is assessment year 2026-27 and still falls under the Income-tax Act, 1961. From tax year 2026-27 the Income-tax Act, 2025 applies, with the same pattern of due dates (section 263).
| Date | What | Who |
|---|---|---|
| 31 March 2026 | End of financial year 2025-26. Schedule VDA only accepts transfers up to this date | Everyone |
| 31 July 2026 | Income tax return due (ITR-1 and ITR-2 filers and other taxpayers without business income) | Individuals |
| 31 August 2026 | Return due for business or professional income without a tax audit (moved from 31 July by the Finance Act, 2026) | Individuals and firms with business income |
| 21 October 2026 | Tax audit report due (extended from 30 September 2026) | Taxpayers with a tax audit |
| 21 November 2026 | Return due for companies and other taxpayers with a tax audit (extended from 31 October 2026 by Circular 07/2026) | Companies and audited taxpayers |
| 31 December 2026 | Last day for a belated return for 2025-26 (nine months after the year) | Everyone who missed the due date |
| 31 March 2027 | Last day for a revised return (twelve months after the year; a fee applies after nine months) | Everyone who needs to correct a return |
| 31 March 2031 | Last day for an updated return for 2025-26 (48 months), with additional tax | Everyone, subject to conditions |
Individuals: step by step
Which return to use
- ITR-2 is for individuals and HUFs without income from business or profession, including capital gains. Most private crypto investors use it.
- ITR-3 is for individuals and HUFs with business or professional income, for example if you report crypto trading as business income.
- Not ITR-1 or ITR-4. The e-filing validation rules for 2026-27 say that a taxpayer “having income under special rate is not eligible” to file ITR-1 or ITR-4, and they flag returns that show TDS under section 194S.
Crypto in the return (Schedule VDA)
- List every transfer of a VDA during the financial year in Schedule VDA: date of acquisition, date of transfer, the head of income (capital gains or business income), cost of acquisition and sale consideration. The schedule computes the income for each line.
- Do not net losses: a negative line does not reduce the total. The total of positive incomes under capital gains flows into Schedule CG and is taxed at 30% “u/s 115BBH”.
- Claim the 1% TDS that exchanges deducted. Check it first in your Form 26AS and Annual Information Statement (AIS). If TDS under section 194S appears but no VDA income is reported, the e-filing system warns that the income “is either not offered to tax or is not offered to tax completely”.
- File the return and verify it.
Late, revised and updated returns
We found no procedure for an individual to request a later due date; the CBDT sometimes extends due dates for whole groups by circular, as it did for audited taxpayers in September 2026. If you miss the due date you can still file a belated return within nine months after the year, so by 31 December 2026 for 2025-26; a fee (section 234F) and interest (sections 234A to 234C) can apply. The Finance Act, 2026 extended the period for a revised return from nine to twelve months after the year, with a fee for revisions after nine months. An updated return can be filed within 48 months from the end of the assessment year, with additional income tax; it cannot reduce the tax or increase a refund, and it is generally not allowed where an assessment, reassessment, search, survey or prosecution is pending or completed. The Finance Act, 2026 opened it up after a reassessment notice in some cases.
Companies
- Deadline: companies and taxpayers whose accounts must be audited file by 31 October in the year after the financial year. For 2025-26 the CBDT extended this to 21 November 2026, and the audit report to 21 October 2026 (Circular 07/2026 of 28 September 2026).
- Crypto in the return: companies use ITR-6, which also has Schedule VDA (ITR-6 validation rules for AY 2026-27).
What providers report
Exchanges already report to the tax department through their TDS returns. The Ministry of Finance told the Lok Sabha in July 2025 that “TDS returns filed by VASPs and income tax returns filed by the taxpayers are analysed to identify discrepancies”, and that under its NUDGE campaign the CBDT wrote to taxpayers whose unreported VDA transactions exceeded ₹1 lakh. By December 2025 it had sent 44,057 such communications.
From 1 April 2026 a new, separate duty applies. Under section 509 of the Income-tax Act, 2025, a prescribed reporting entity must furnish a statement on transactions in crypto-assets. Since 1 April 2026 the penalty is ₹200 for every day a statement is late, and ₹50,000 for inaccurate information that is not corrected or for not meeting the due-diligence requirements (section 446). The rules that name the reporting entities and the filing dates are in the Income-tax Rules, 2026, which we could not check (October 2026). India has not said in the sources we checked whether this data will be exchanged with other countries under the OECD’s Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF).
Records: what to keep and for how long
We found no tax department page on record-keeping for individual crypto holders. Schedule VDA itself shows what you need for every transfer:
- the date you acquired the coins and the date you transferred them;
- the cost of acquisition and the sale consideration, in rupees;
- the TDS certificates or the exchange statement that shows the 1% deducted;
- for swaps and peer-to-peer trades, evidence of the value received and of any TDS paid.
We found no fixed retention period for individuals. Because an updated return is possible up to 48 months after the assessment year, keep these records at least that long. We also found no crypto-specific retention rules for companies.
Penalties and voluntary disclosure
| Situation | Consequence (as published, October 2026) |
|---|---|
| Return filed late | Late fee under section 234F and interest under section 234A (amounts not checked here) |
| Undisclosed income from VDAs found in search and survey actions | ₹888.82 crore detected so far, according to the Ministry of Finance (December 2025) |
| Exchange does not deposit TDS on a VDA transfer | Prosecution is possible; the Finance Act, 2026 removed it where the consideration is wholly in kind and lowered the punishment in other cases (for example simple imprisonment of up to two years, or a fine, where the tax exceeds ₹50 lakh) |
| Crypto-asset statement late, or inaccurate and not corrected | ₹200 a day, or ₹50,000 (section 446, from 1 April 2026) |
| Undisclosed foreign assets, including VDAs | Black Money Act, 2015 applies, according to the Ministry of Finance |
Forgot to report crypto? File a revised return while that is still possible, or an updated return within 48 months with additional tax. An updated return is generally not possible once an assessment, search or survey is pending or completed. With exchange TDS data and, from 2026-27, crypto-asset statements, the department will increasingly know about crypto held at Indian providers. For foreign assets, a one-time Foreign Assets of Small Taxpayers Disclosure Scheme, 2026 is open until 31 December 2026; its rules do not mention VDAs, so check with an adviser whether crypto abroad qualifies.
Sources
- CBDT: Circular No. 07/2026, extension of timelines for audit reports and ITRs for AY 2026-27 (28 September 2026) (last checked October 2026)
- Income Tax Department e-filing portal: Latest news (last checked October 2026)
- Ministry of Finance: Memorandum explaining the provisions in the Finance Bill, 2026 (due dates, revised and updated returns, prosecution) (last checked October 2026)
- CBDT: e-Filing ITR-2 validation rules, AY 2026-27 (Schedule VDA) (last checked October 2026)
- CBDT: e-Filing ITR-1 validation rules, AY 2026-27 (last checked October 2026)
- CBDT: e-Filing ITR-4 validation rules, AY 2026-27 (last checked October 2026)
- CBDT: e-Filing ITR-6 validation rules, AY 2026-27 (last checked October 2026)
- Income Tax Department e-filing portal: ITR-2 FAQs (last checked October 2026)
- Income Tax Department: Income-tax Act, 2025, section 446, as substituted by the Finance Act, 2026 (last checked October 2026)
- Lok Sabha: Unstarred question 13, Income Tax on VDA and Cryptocurrency Income (21 July 2025) (last checked October 2026)
- Lok Sabha: Unstarred question 1366, Black Money in Crypto Currency (8 December 2025) (last checked October 2026)
- Lok Sabha: Unstarred question 1194, Taxation of Crypto-Currency in the Country (8 December 2025) (last checked October 2026)
- CBDT: Notification No. 114/2026, Foreign Assets of Small Taxpayers Disclosure Scheme Rules, 2026 (last checked October 2026)
This page is general information, not tax advice. Rules, amounts and dates change, so check the official sources above or ask a chartered accountant before you act.