To fill Schedule VDA in your ITR, open ITR-2 or ITR-3 on the income-tax e-filing portal, add one row per crypto transfer (or per asset, aggregated), and enter the date of acquisition, date of transfer, head of income (capital gains for investors), cost of acquisition, and consideration received — the income is the difference, taxed flat at 30% + 4% cess under Section 115BBH. Losses are reported but give you no set-off, and the 1% TDS deducted under Section 194S is claimed separately in Schedule TDS, not inside Schedule VDA.
That's the two-sentence version. The rest of this guide goes through the schedule column by column for FY 2025-26 (AY 2026-27), with a worked example in rupees, because Schedule VDA is short but unforgiving — most crypto tax notices trace back to a number in this table that doesn't reconcile with what exchanges already reported to the department.
What Is Schedule VDA?
Schedule VDA is the dedicated section of the income tax return where you report income from the transfer of Virtual Digital Assets — crypto coins, tokens, and NFTs. It was introduced from AY 2023-24 to give effect to Section 115BBH, which taxes VDA gains at a flat 30% (plus 4% health & education cess, so 31.2% effective), with only one deduction allowed: the cost of acquisition. No exchange fees, no indexation, no slab benefit, and — critically — no set-off of losses against anything, and no carry-forward.
Every taxable crypto disposal goes here: selling to INR, swapping one coin for another, spending crypto, and P2P sales. Income-type receipts like airdrops, staking rewards, or salary paid in crypto are first taxed as income at market value when received; Schedule VDA then captures the gain when you later sell those coins, with that taxed value as your cost of acquisition.
One thing Schedule VDA is not: it's not optional for small amounts. Even a ₹500 gain — or a year that ended entirely in losses — needs to be disclosed here. A loss row gives you no tax benefit, but a blank schedule against a non-zero AIS is how you get a mismatch notice.
Who Must Fill It: ITR-2 vs ITR-3
ITR-1 and ITR-4 don't have Schedule VDA, so if you have any VDA income at all, you're filing one of these:
- ITR-2 — you're a salaried employee or investor with no business or professional income. Your crypto gains are treated as capital gains under 115BBH. This covers the vast majority of retail crypto investors.
- ITR-3 — you have business or professional income (freelancing, a shop, consulting), or you're treating high-frequency crypto trading or derivatives as business income. ITR-3 contains the same Schedule VDA, plus the business schedules.
The schedule itself is identical in both forms; only the surrounding return changes. If you're unsure which form is yours, our ITR-2 vs ITR-3 for crypto guide settles it in five minutes. And note the rate doesn't change either way — business or capital gains, VDA transfers are taxed at 30% under 115BBH.
Schedule VDA, Column by Column
On the income-tax e-filing portal, Schedule VDA appears as a table where you add one row per transfer. The exact on-screen labels shift slightly between portal versions, but the columns ask for the same substance every year:
- Sl. No. — row number, auto-generated as you add entries.
- Date of acquisition: when you bought the coins being sold in this row. If your sell was matched against multiple buy lots under FIFO, each lot is strictly its own row with its own acquisition date (aggregation per asset is the practical alternative — see below).
- Date of transfer: when you sold, swapped, or otherwise disposed of the asset.
- Head under which income is taxable: a dropdown — "Capital Gains" for investors (the default for almost everyone filing ITR-2), or "Business income" if you're reporting trading as a business in ITR-3. Either way the 30% rate applies; this selection just routes the income to the right head.
- Cost of acquisition: what you paid, in INR, for exactly the quantity being sold — computed on FIFO. Only the purchase price counts; you cannot add exchange fees, gas, or subscription costs here.
- Consideration received: the full sale value in INR. For coin-to-coin swaps and non-INR pairs, this is the fair market value in rupees on the date of transfer.
- Income from transfer of VDA: consideration minus cost. The portal computes this per row. A negative number (loss) is reported as-is but won't reduce the tax on your gain rows.
If the portal version you're using asks for a quarterly break-up of your VDA income (as it does for capital gains generally), fill in which quarter of the year each gain arose in — this feeds the advance-tax interest computation under Sections 234B/C. Your trade dates give you this directly; a per-quarter gains summary from your tax report makes it a copy-paste job.
One row per trade, or aggregate per asset?
Strictly, the schedule is transaction-wise. Practically, nobody hand-enters 400 rows. The widely used approach is one aggregated row per asset — all BTC disposals in one row (earliest acquisition date, latest transfer date, total cost, total consideration), all ETH in another — as long as the totals reconcile exactly with your computation sheet and your AIS. High-volume filers can instead prepare the data offline and upload it as a JSON through the offline utility. Whichever route you take, keep the trade-level working — that's what you'll produce if a notice arrives.
A Worked Example in ₹
Meet Priya, a salaried analyst filing ITR-2 for FY 2025-26. Her year, after FIFO matching:
- Row 1 — BTC: bought 0.2 BTC on 12 May 2025 for ₹11,00,000; sold on 18 Nov 2025 for ₹14,20,000. Income: ₹3,20,000.
- Row 2 — ETH: bought 3 ETH on 3 Jul 2025 for ₹6,60,000; sold on 22 Jan 2026 for ₹7,45,000. Income: ₹85,000.
- Row 3 — MATIC: bought on 9 Aug 2025 for ₹1,50,000; sold on 2 Feb 2026 for ₹95,000. Income: −₹55,000 (loss).
Each row goes into Schedule VDA with head of income = Capital Gains. Now the tax math:
- Taxable VDA income: ₹3,20,000 + ₹85,000 = ₹4,05,000 — the MATIC loss is reported in row 3 but set off against nothing.
- Tax at 30%: ₹1,21,500
- Cess at 4%: ₹4,860
- Total tax on VDA income: ₹1,26,360
- Less 1% TDS already deducted on her sells (₹14,20,000 + ₹7,45,000 + ₹95,000 = ₹22,60,000 × 1%): −₹22,600
- Net payable on crypto: ₹1,03,760 (plus any 234B/C interest if advance tax fell short)
Notice what did not happen: the ₹55,000 loss didn't reduce the ₹4,05,000, and none of Priya's exchange fees entered the cost column. That's 115BBH working exactly as designed.
Where the 194S TDS Shows Up — and Where to Claim It
Every Indian exchange deducts 1% TDS under Section 194S on your sells and deposits it against your PAN. That money is a prepayment of your tax, and you claim it back — but not inside Schedule VDA. The flow is:
- Check Form 26AS and your AIS on the e-filing portal. TDS from each exchange appears under section code 194S, listed against the exchange's TAN, usually quarter by quarter. Your AIS will also show the gross sale consideration the exchanges reported.
- Open Schedule TDS in your ITR. The 194S entries are normally pre-filled from 26AS — verify each exchange's TAN and amount against what you see in 26AS.
- Add anything missing manually, but only if it actually appears in 26AS. Claiming TDS that the deductor hasn't deposited is an instant processing mismatch.
The TDS then offsets the 30% liability in the tax computation, as in Priya's example. If your TDS exceeds your final tax — common for high-volume, thin-margin traders — the excess comes back as a refund after processing. P2P sellers, note: on P2P the buyer was supposed to deduct TDS, and often didn't. Missing TDS doesn't remove your obligation to report the sale in Schedule VDA; it just means there's no credit to claim.
Common Schedule VDA Mistakes
- Netting losses against gains before entering. The single biggest error. If you enter one "net" figure of gains minus losses, you've under-reported. Gains are taxed in full; losses are disclosed and forfeited.
- Netting across coins. Same trap, different shape — your ETH loss cannot shrink your BTC gain. Each asset's (indeed each transfer's) income stands alone.
- Omitting P2P and international-exchange trades. No TDS was deducted, so it feels invisible. It isn't — bank credits from P2P buyers are visible to the department, and the income is taxable regardless of where the trade happened.
- Padding cost of acquisition with fees. Trading fees, deposit charges, gas — none of it is deductible under 115BBH. Cost means purchase price only.
- Reporting VDA gains under "Income from Other Sources" instead. Wrong schedule; the portal then can't apply the 30% correctly, and your return won't match the department's expectation of a VDA disclosure.
- Numbers that don't reconcile with AIS. If exchanges reported ₹22,60,000 of sale consideration and your Schedule VDA rows total ₹18,00,000, expect a query. Cross-check before submitting, not after.
- Skipping the schedule in a loss year. Report the loss rows. A nil-tax VDA disclosure is vastly better than silence against a populated AIS.
Schedule VDA is the last step of the pipeline, not the first — the hard part is producing correct FIFO-matched cost and consideration figures per asset. That's what the CryptoITR calculator is for: upload your exchange files (CoinDCX, Binance, WazirX, CoinSwitch, and more), and it runs FIFO across everything, totals your 194S TDS, and gives you per-asset figures shaped exactly like the Schedule VDA table. Calculating is free; the downloadable ITR-ready report starts at ₹199 per financial year — cheaper than one hour of a CA's time spent untangling a spreadsheet.
And once your numbers are ready, our companion guide on how to file ITR with crypto income walks the rest of the return — portal navigation, tax payment, e-verification — end to end.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I show a single consolidated entry in Schedule VDA?
The schedule is designed transaction-wise, but per-asset aggregation (one row per coin with totals) is widely used and accepted in practice, provided your totals reconcile with AIS/26AS and you retain the trade-level working. For hundreds of trades, aggregate per asset or use the offline JSON utility.
Do I report crypto losses in Schedule VDA?
Yes. Enter the loss row with its cost and consideration — the income column will be negative. You get no set-off or carry-forward, but disclosure keeps your return consistent with the data exchanges reported about you.
Which "head of income" do I select in Schedule VDA?
"Capital Gains" for almost all retail investors filing ITR-2. Select "Business income" only if you're genuinely reporting trading as a business in ITR-3. The 30% + cess rate under Section 115BBH applies identically under both heads.
Where do I claim the 1% TDS deducted by exchanges?
In Schedule TDS, not Schedule VDA. The 194S entries pre-fill from Form 26AS against each exchange's TAN — verify them, add any that are genuinely in 26AS but missing from the pre-fill, and the credit offsets your 30% liability automatically.
Is Schedule VDA in ITR-1?
No. ITR-1 and ITR-4 have no Schedule VDA, so any VDA income at all pushes you to ITR-2 (no business income) or ITR-3 (with business income) — even for a tiny gain.