How to Report Kalshi and Polymarket on Your Taxes, Form by Form (and in TurboTax)

You report Kalshi and Polymarket trades yourself, because neither sends a form with your trading profit on it. First pick one tax method for the year. The method then decides the form: Form 8949 for capital gains, Schedule 1 for ordinary income or gambling, or Form 6781 for Section 1256. This post shows where each number goes, on paper and in TurboTax.

If you haven’t chosen a method yet, start with how prediction markets are taxed. The rest of this post assumes you have.

Step 1: get your full history

• Kalshi: download the realized P&L file from the Documents tab and the activity export from Your activity. The P&L file has your closed positions; the activity export is the only place your reward credits show up. (Which Kalshi file, and why.)
• Polymarket (polymarket.com): there is no tax document. Your history lives on the blockchain under your wallet address. (How to get it.)
• Robinhood: the yearly event contracts statement lists your trades, but it says itself that it is not a tax form.

Step 2: find your method’s form

Use one method for all your event contracts in a year. Mixing them, capital for the winners and gambling for the losers, is the kind of return that invites questions.

Capital gains: Form 8949

Each closed position is one line on Form 8949: what it was, the date you bought, the date it closed, what you got back and what you paid. The box at the top says how it was reported:

• Kalshi and Polymarket US: box C (held a year or less) or box F (longer). These boxes are for sales no 1099-B reported.
• polymarket.com: box I or box L. Starting with the 2025 form, the IRS has separate boxes for digital assets and says not to use box C for them.

The totals flow to Schedule D. If your losses beat your gains, up to $3,000 of the net loss ($1,500 if married filing separately) comes off your other income this year, and the rest carries forward.

In TurboTax: add an investment sale, choose to type it in yourself, and answer no when it asks whether you got a 1099-B. You can enter positions one by one, or enter one total per box. With totals, TurboTax will ask you to send the line-by-line detail to the IRS, either attached as a PDF or mailed with Form 8453. A Form 8949 with every position on it does that job.

Ordinary income: Schedule 1, line 8z

Net your winners against your losers for the year and enter the result on line 8z, “other income”, with a plain description such as “Kalshi event contracts, net”. In TurboTax this sits under less common income, then miscellaneous income, then other reportable income.

If the year is a net loss, whether it can reduce your other income depends on your facts, including whether your trading counts as a business. Ask a preparer before you rely on it.

Gambling: line 8b and Schedule A

Your winnings go on Schedule 1, line 8b. Your losses go on Schedule A, line 16, and only count if you itemize. They can’t exceed your winnings, and from 2026 only 90% of them count (the 90% rule). In TurboTax, open gambling winnings, say you have no W-2G, enter the amount as other gambling winnings, and the losses screen comes next.

Section 1256: Form 6781

Your net gain or loss goes on Form 6781, Part I. The form splits it for you: 60% long-term and 40% short-term, both carried to Schedule D. Positions still open on December 31 count as if sold at that day’s price. This method only has a case for CFTC-regulated exchanges like Kalshi and Polymarket US, never polymarket.com (why).

In TurboTax: less common investments, then contracts and straddles. Say yes to Section 1256 contracts and enter the total for each account. Don’t also enter the same trades as stock sales, or they count twice.

Don’t count anything twice

The forms Kalshi does send are not your trading profit, and each one goes in its own place:

• 1099-INT: interest on your balance. Enter it as interest, like a bank’s.
• 1099-MISC: reward credits and rebates. Enter it as the form shows, and keep those credits out of your trading numbers.
• 1099-DA or 1099-B: crypto you moved in or out. It covers that crypto, not your trades.

Don’t use Kalshi’s own profit figure as your trading number. It blends reward credits into trading profit, so the rewards would be taxed twice (details).

Keep the file you worked from

No form means the IRS has no copy of your trading to compare against. If it asks, your answer is the export and the worksheet you built from it. Keep both with your return.

How WagerMints fits

WagerMints reads your Kalshi export or your polymarket.com wallet and prices the year under all four methods, free and with no account. Pro ($39 per tax year) produces Form 8949, already split by box, plus Schedule D and Form 6781 as PDFs. You can attach those or copy the totals into TurboTax. For the ordinary and gambling methods, the report gives you the figures for each line above.