Free IRS form · Official PDF

Schedule D: Capital Gains and Losses

2025 tax year · Download free — no email, no account

Sold stock, crypto, property, or any other capital asset? Schedule D is where gains and losses get netted and taxed. Download the form free and understand the short-term/long-term split that decides your rate.

Schedule D — Capital Gains and Losses

Free · Official IRS PDF · 2025 tax year · Print-ready
↓  Download Schedule D (PDF) Instructions: irs.gov

What is Schedule D?

Schedule D, Capital Gains and Losses, attaches to Form 1040 and summarizes every capital asset sale for the year — stocks, bonds, mutual funds, crypto, real estate, collectibles. The detail usually comes from Form 8949, where individual transactions are listed; Schedule D totals them and runs the netting math.

The form's central distinction is holding period: assets held one year or less produce short-term gains taxed as ordinary income, while assets held more than one year get the preferential long-term rates (0%, 15%, or 20% depending on income). Losses offset gains, and up to $3,000 of net loss deducts against ordinary income each year, with the rest carrying forward indefinitely.

Who files Schedule D?

  • Investors who sold stocks, ETFs, bonds, or mutual funds in a taxable account.
  • Crypto holders — selling, swapping, or spending cryptocurrency is a capital transaction.
  • Home and property sellers — including those claiming the home-sale exclusion on gains above it.
  • Recipients of capital gain distributions from mutual funds (sometimes without Form 8949).

Deadlines

Files with Form 1040 by the April deadline. Brokerages issue consolidated 1099-Bs by mid-February — and corrected versions often follow, another common reason investors file extensions.

How to fill out Schedule D

  1. List transactions on Form 8949

    Each sale with dates, proceeds, and cost basis — grouped by whether the broker reported basis to the IRS.

  2. Split short-term and long-term

    Part I of Schedule D collects short-term totals; Part II collects long-term. Holding period is measured from the day after purchase through the sale date.

  3. Net gains against losses

    Short-term nets against short-term, long-term against long-term, then the two net against each other.

  4. Apply the $3,000 loss allowance

    A net overall loss deducts up to $3,000 against ordinary income ($1,500 married filing separately); the excess carries forward.

  5. Compute tax with the worksheet

    The Schedule D Tax Worksheet applies the preferential long-term rates — don't tax long-term gains at ordinary rates by accident.

Schedule D — frequently asked questions

Holding period. One year or less is short-term, taxed at your ordinary income rate. More than one year is long-term, taxed at 0%, 15%, or 20% depending on your taxable income — a gap that makes holding 366 days instead of 364 genuinely valuable.
Losses first offset gains without limit. If losses win overall, up to $3,000 per year deducts against ordinary income, and the remainder carries forward to future years indefinitely.
Yes — the IRS treats cryptocurrency as property. Selling for dollars, trading one coin for another, and spending crypto are all taxable events that belong on Form 8949 and Schedule D. Buying and holding is not.
Sell a security at a loss and rebuy the same (or substantially identical) one within 30 days before or after, and the loss is disallowed — it gets added to the basis of the new shares instead. It's the main trap in tax-loss harvesting.

Related IRS forms

Form 8949Sales and Other Dispositions of Capital AssetsSchedule BInterest and Ordinary DividendsForm 1040U.S. Individual Income Tax ReturnSchedule 1Additional Income and Adjustments to Income

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Important: BizDocs is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Internal Revenue Service. The forms offered on this page are official, unmodified IRS documents provided free as a public resource; the IRS publishes them in the public domain at irs.gov. The guides on this page are general information, not tax or legal advice — tax rules change and depend on your situation, so verify details in the official IRS instructions or with a qualified tax professional before filing.