Money or points awarded for a referral is compensation for work performed. Adding another requirement would not eliminate the compensation aspect, and the payment would still be taxable.
Someone received a $1000 1099 on his 100K Marriott card that the bonus was earned by SPENDING.
All the armchair speculations notwithstanding, nobody has a privy on whether Chase (and Amex) have received IRS private rulings, or being audited by IRS on their deduction of expenditures in their CC businesses - that leads to IRS tell them if you deduct those bonuses and retention offers as expenditures, then you need to report these as Misc Income received by the cardholders as well. Who knows?
The more real DPs surface, the bigger scope has become - so what would be the BA cards that you earn a bonus for each milestone spend? If the 100K Marriott is taxable, how about the BA tier bonuses, both require spending to earn?
On top of that, the retention offers often are just offset the AF billed, sometimes not even in full - but these are reported on the 1099s for both personal and business cards by Chase. I do not see any DP AMEX are treating retention offers being taxable income.
It is getting more and more obvious that Chase outsourced 1099 handling firm with the software used, is seriously flawed.