What Does Date Acquired Mean for Capital Gains Tax?

For capital gains tax, the date acquired is the specific calendar day you became the legal owner of an asset. That date starts your holding period, and the holding period decides whether the profit you eventually report is taxed as a short-term gain at ordinary income rates or as a long-term gain at the lower capital gains rates. Getting the date right on your return is what keeps you from overpaying, or from claiming a rate you are not entitled to.

The rule the IRS applies is “more than one year,” not a flat 365 days. An asset bought on January 1 has to be held until at least January 2 of the following year before a sale qualifies for long-term treatment.¹ Short-term gains are taxed at your ordinary income rate, which can run as high as 37%.² Long-term gains are taxed at 0%, 15%, or 20% depending on your total taxable income. For 2026, the 0% rate applies to single filers with taxable income up to $49,450 and joint filers up to $98,900; the 15% rate runs above those figures up to $545,500 single and $613,700 joint; anything above is taxed at 20%.

How the Date Is Set for Each Type of Asset

The rule for pinning down the date depends on how you got the asset.

Something You Bought

For real estate, the date acquired is the closing date, when the deed transfers to you. For stocks and other exchange-traded securities, the IRS uses the trade date (the day the order was placed), not the later settlement date when the transaction clears.³ For a car, equipment, or other personal property, it is the transaction date on the receipt or bill of sale.

A Gift

When property is given to you, you take over the donor’s original acquisition date along with the donor’s cost basis. Your holding period includes all the time the donor owned the property before the gift.⁴ Stock a parent bought in 2015 and gave you in 2025 is long-term the day it lands in your account.

An Inheritance

For inherited property, the date acquired is the date of the decedent’s death, and your basis is stepped up (or down) to the fair market value on that date.⁵ Inherited property is automatically treated as long-term no matter how quickly you sell, even if the sale is the day after you receive it.⁴

Restricted Stock and Section 83(b)

Restricted stock granted by an employer is acquired, for tax purposes, on the day the shares vest, meaning the day they are no longer subject to a substantial risk of forfeiture. That is when the capital gains clock starts.⁵

Filing a Section 83(b) election within 30 days of the grant changes that. The acquisition date shifts back to the original transfer date, starting the clock earlier and potentially converting a short-term sale into a long-term one. The election also locks in taxable income at the grant-date value instead of the (usually higher) vesting-date value.

Crypto Airdrops and Hard Forks

Cryptocurrency received in an airdrop following a hard fork is acquired at the moment the new tokens are recorded on the distributed ledger. If your wallet or exchange does not immediately support the new currency, the acquisition date is pushed to the later day you first gain the ability to transfer, sell, or exchange the tokens.⁶ The fair market value on that date becomes your basis.

Section 1031 Like-Kind Exchanges

When you swap investment or business real estate in a 1031 exchange, the replacement property inherits the holding period of the property you gave up. In effect, the acquisition date reaches back to when you originally bought the relinquished property.⁴

When Someone Else’s Holding Period Counts as Yours

In several situations, the IRS lets you count time that someone else held the property, or time you held a different asset, toward your holding period. This is called tacking, and it can turn a short-term gain into a long-term one.

Gifts: you inherit the donor’s holding period along with basis, so the clock started when the donor first bought the property.⁴
Like-kind exchanges: the holding period of the property you gave up carries over to the replacement.⁴
Wash sales: if you sell a security at a loss and buy a substantially identical one within 30 days before or after the sale, the loss is disallowed and the holding period of the original security tacks onto the replacement. Two years on the original shares means two years counted on the new ones, which can preserve long-term status even though the replacement shares are freshly purchased.⁷

Tacking matters most when a sale is near the one-year mark. Knowing which situations tack, and which reset the clock to zero, can be the difference between the top ordinary rate and the 15% long-term rate.

Qualified Small Business Stock: A Longer Clock

The date acquired carries extra weight for qualified small business stock under Section 1202. For shares issued before July 4, 2025, you must hold the stock for more than five years to exclude up to 100% of the gain, capped at $10 million or ten times basis. For shares issued on or after that date, the exclusion is phased: 50% at more than three years, 75% at more than four, and 100% at more than five, with the dollar cap raised to $15 million. Missing a threshold by a day loses the exclusion, so the exact acquisition date has to be documented.

Proving the Date and Fixing It When It’s Wrong

If the IRS questions your return, documentation is what settles the acquisition date. The right paper depends on the asset:

Real estate: recorded deed or closing statement.
Stocks and securities: brokerage trade confirmations and monthly statements listing the trade date.
Personal property: bills of sale, receipts, or purchase contracts.
Inherited assets: probate records, death certificate, or estate settlement documents establishing the date of death.
Digital assets: blockchain records, exchange transaction logs, and wallet histories showing when tokens were received.

Keep copies in both physical and digital form. You may need them decades later, especially for real estate or inherited property.

When Form 1099-B Shows the Wrong Date

Brokers report your acquisition date to the IRS in Box 1b of Form 1099-B, and errors are common with employee stock plan shares, reinvested dividends, and transfers between brokers. Start by asking the broker for a corrected form. If it does not arrive in time, report the correct date yourself on Form 8949: enter the accurate date in Column (b) and use the appropriate adjustment code in Column (f) to flag the discrepancy. If the wrong date pushed a transaction into the wrong holding-period category, use Code T and move the transaction to the correct part of the form.³

For inherited assets, write “INHERITED” in the date acquired column. For a block of shares bought on different dates, you can enter “VARIOUS,” but you still have to separate short-term and long-term portions onto the correct parts of the form.

One Boundary: Business Depreciation Uses a Different Date

If you are dealing with a business asset, know that depreciation does not use the date acquired. MACRS depreciation and the Section 179 deduction start on the placed-in-service date, meaning the day you first use the asset in your business or begin producing income with it. Equipment bought in November but not installed and running until February begins depreciating in February, not the prior year. The date acquired still governs bonus depreciation eligibility: certain property acquired after January 19, 2025, may qualify for a 100% special depreciation allowance where the trigger is the acquisition date rather than the placed-in-service date.⁸

1
Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 409 – Capital Gains and Losses
2
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 544 – Sales and Other Dispositions of Assets
3
Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 8949
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 1223 – Holding Period of Property
5
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 551 – Basis of Assets
6
Internal Revenue Service. Revenue Ruling 2019-24
7
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 550 – Investment Income and Expenses
8
Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 4562