You could have bought stock directly from the company, in an IPO or secondary offering (where it does not go through an exchange), from an individual or broker not intermediated by an exchange, etc.

You can keep stock certificates in a safe deposit box, and then later transfer them into your brokerage account, they have no idea what you paid for them.

This is a solved problem, cryptocurrency is not special. If they have the cost basis they can tell you, if not, they can leave it blank.

>>This is a solved problem, cryptocurrency is not special. If they have the cost basis they can tell you, if not, they can leave it blank.

We're in agreement - this is a solved problem that the retail investor or their accountant needs to calculate manually via aggregation of the entire lifecycle of the asset(s) to properly account for capital gains (or losses).

You should probably call the IRS tipline and say "I think [Schwab] isn't filing their 1099-Bs, you know the thing which reports cost bases and short-term/long-term capital gains for retail investors, and accordingly they're on the hook for billions of dollars of penalties, but to keep the math easy just write me a check for a billion dollars rather than what the law actually says you owe me for this hot tip."

Or, in the alternative, you could look again.

I checked again, and you're right. Interactive Brokers is the only platform I still infrequently use but it does have a list of pre-filled tax forms available for download. Worksheet 8949 is also pre-filled, but this is probably where one would need to submit a revised version if previous cost-basis amounts need to be adjusted as in the specific edge cases we're talking about above.

Coinbase seems to have sent 1099-K documents to eligible customers which isn't as detailed as 1099-Bs since I believe the Ks only report gross transaction volumes over $20K[1].

[1] https://www.irs.gov/businesses/understanding-your-1099-k

https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe...

I cannot account for the discrepancy, but I use Charles Schwab, and it absolutely DOES calculate and display capital gains. In cases where I have moved a security into the account (rather than purchasing it directly within the account) I have had to provide original cost basis information for them in order for the calculations to be correct.

BUT from what I understand, people leave a lot of coins on exchanges and never transfer them back to personal wallets. Coinbase can track that.

See "Basis of Assets" https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p551.pdf and "Investment Income and Expenses" https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p550.pdf

None of that covers cryptocurrency directly yet, but looking at how more traditional investments are treated can inspire you to try to do your taxes in the spirit of the rules to avoid likely problems.