If you sold crypto in FY 2025-26 and missed 31 July 2026, first check which form you should be filing. For AY 2026-27, 31 July 2026 was the due date for ITR-1 and ITR-2 filers. If you have business or professional income and file ITR-3 without a tax audit, your due date is 31 August 2026, because Budget 2026 moved it from 31 July. So some people who think they missed it have not.
If your date really has passed, a belated return may still be possible. Check the income tax portal and talk to a chartered accountant before you do anything else. What you should not do is leave the crypto sales out to make the return simpler. Every sale, swap and spend goes in Schedule VDA, and the department is getting more data from platforms every year.
Who was due on 31 July
For the assessment year 2026-27 (the money you earned and the coins you sold between 1 April 2025 and 31 March 2026), the 31 July 2026 deadline applied to ITR-1 and ITR-2 filers. That covers most salaried people and pensioners, and many people whose only extra income is capital gains.
Here is the catch for crypto holders. Schedule VDA, the part of the return where you report Bitcoin and other virtual digital assets, sits in ITR-2 and ITR-3. It is not in ITR-1. If you had any VDA income, ITR-1 was never the right form for you, even if your salary alone would have fit it.
So if you are a salaried person who sold some Bitcoin during the year, you were most likely an ITR-2 filer, and your date was 31 July.
Who still has until 31 August
If you report crypto as business income, for example because you trade often enough that you and your CA treat it as a business, you file ITR-3. For non-audit ITR-3 and ITR-4 filers, the AY 2026-27 due date is 31 August 2026. Budget 2026 moved it from 31 July.
That gives you a few weeks. Use them. The work is mostly collecting records, and that takes longer than people expect when they used more than one platform.
Whether your crypto income is capital in nature or business income is a judgment call that depends on how you actually traded. It is not something to decide on your own to buy yourself four more weeks. Ask your CA which head of income applies, and then use the form that matches.
Belated returns: ask your CA, not a forum
If your due date has gone, the Income-tax Act generally allows a belated return within a later window. I am not going to quote the last date or the fees here, because the rules depend on your situation and I would rather you read them on the portal than trust a blog post, including this one.
What I will say plainly: filing late is better than not filing, and filing complete is better than filing neat. A belated return that reports every sale is a much stronger position than an on-time return that leaves sales out.
When you speak to your CA, bring the questions that matter:
- Which form should I use, ITR-2 or ITR-3?
- Is a belated return still possible for me, and what does it cost?
- How do we match my sales against my purchases?
- Where do I enter the TDS that was already deducted?
Get your exchange statements now
Whatever your date, the hardest part is the records. Start today.
Download the full transaction history from every platform you used during the year, including ones you closed. You need each buy and each sale with the date, the rupee value and the fee. If you moved coins to your own wallet or between platforms, keep those transaction IDs too, so the trail is unbroken.
Then log in to the income tax portal and look at your Form 26AS and your Annual Information Statement (AIS). TDS deducted on your crypto sales shows there, and it counts toward the tax you owe. Your AIS can also show information platforms have reported about you. Your return should agree with it.
For each sale, Schedule VDA asks for:
- the date you acquired the asset
- the date you transferred it
- the head of income (capital gain or business income)
- the cost of acquisition
- the sale value
- the resulting income
Our crypto tax calculator helps you sanity check a sale before you sit down with your CA.
Do not leave out sales
The rules have not changed in years, but the visibility has. Income from transferring a VDA is taxed at a flat 30% under section 115BBH, plus applicable surcharge and 4% cess. Only the cost of acquisition can be deducted. A loss on one asset cannot be set off against a gain on another, and it cannot be carried forward.
That last rule is where people get tempted. If you sold one coin at a ₹40,000 gain and another at a ₹30,000 loss, the tax is 30% of ₹40,000, which is ₹12,000 plus cess. The loss does not reduce it. Some people respond by reporting only the net figure, or by dropping the small sales. Both are mistakes our Schedule VDA guide lists, along with forgetting to claim TDS and using ITR-1.
And the data trail is getting thicker. In late July 2026, CBDT guidance under section 509 of the Income-tax Act, 2025 and Rules 241 to 244 set out how crypto platforms will report under the OECD's Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework. From calendar year 2026, platforms report acquisitions, disposals, crypto-to-crypto trades and transfers in rupees in Form 167, due by 31 May of the following year. This creates no new tax and no new filing duty for you. But the department will see more transaction-level data, so what you report in your return should match what the platforms report.
If you used more than one platform
Most people who get stuck at filing time did not trade much. They just used three apps over two years and lost track of what moved where.
Lay it out in order. List every platform and wallet you used during the year, even ones you only tried once. For each, download the full history. Then match the movements between them. A withdrawal from one platform and a deposit into another, or into your own wallet, is commonly viewed as a move between your own accounts rather than a sale, though there is no specific ruling, so confirm it with your CA. A swap from one coin to another is a transfer, and so is spending crypto on something. Those go in Schedule VDA.
Then check the TDS. Add up what each platform deducted, and compare it with Form 26AS. If a platform's figure does not match, raise it with that platform through its official support channel before you file, not after.
And if you already filed on ITR-1 with crypto sales in it, or left sales out of a return you filed, do not ignore it. Ask your CA whether and how it should be corrected. Fixing a return yourself, early, is a very different conversation from being asked about it later.
Why I care about the boring part
I remember the third day of Unocoin's business in 2013. We had two employees. About thirty people from the tax department showed up at our office. That was our welcome to running a Bitcoin company in India.
It taught us something early that I still believe: you can't run from the government. They exist, and you have to deal with them. We built Unocoin on the idea that you never break the rules and you never get caught offside. That is why we stayed in India through the 2018 banking cut-off and argued our case in court instead of leaving.
I wish every holder treated their own tax filing the same way. Not with fear. With discipline. Keep your statements, report every sale, claim your TDS, and let a CA check the result. It is boring. Boring is what lets you hold Bitcoin for decades without a knot in your stomach every July.
If you are filing now, start with our step-by-step Schedule VDA guide, then take your statements to your CA. The full rules sit in the India crypto tax guide. This is general information, not tax advice.
Common questions
Can I still file ITR after 31 July 2026?
Possibly. If you file ITR-3 without an audit, your AY 2026-27 due date is 31 August 2026. If your date has passed, a belated return may still be possible. Check the income tax portal and your CA for the window and costs that apply to you.
Is there a penalty for late ITR with crypto?
Filing late can carry costs under the Income-tax Act, and leaving out crypto sales creates a bigger problem than filing late. The exact amounts depend on your income and timing, so check the portal and confirm with your CA.
Do I need ITR-3 for crypto trading?
Schedule VDA appears in ITR-2 and ITR-3. ITR-2 is for people without business income; ITR-3 is for business or professional income, which can include frequent trading. Your CA decides which head of income fits how you traded.
Where do I get my crypto tax statement?
Download the full transaction history from each platform you used, then check Form 26AS and your AIS on the income tax portal for TDS and reported transactions. Your return should agree with those records.