Chase appears to be sending 1099s for referral bonuses as well based off comments on the interwebz today.

https://www.doctorofcredit.com/chase...%A2-per-point/

I wonder how much money is being wasted by AMEX, Chase, and anyone else to mess with these 1099's?

As minimum spend bonuses are considered a rebate, and not 1099'd, they could save a ton of money by simply changing some language in their referral bonuses. For example, they could change it to something like, "Earn 20k bonus points when you refer a new card member who is approved, and you make a purchase on the card to which they were referred in the same month."

Or something along those lines anyway. So "in theory" that turns a straight bonus into a "rebate" where you need to also make a purchase (any purchase) on your card in the same month in which they apply. I would think something like that would work, as there are cards which don't require a fixed amount for spend, but just that you spend something. Those don't incur a 1099 and should work to circumvent the 1099 for referral bonuses.

It would save them a decent chunk of money most likely, and shouldn't be much of a logic change to their software.

Bumping this back to the first page, so far only ONE person is saying they received a 1099 for a sign up bonus.............I would think this thread would be 30 pages deep if everyone was getting a 1099 for a SU bonus

We received 3 Hilton NAF to Ascend upgrade bonuses and 4 new DL Gold AMEX via targeted offers in 2018.......... so far no 1099's

I got two 1099's for sign up bonuses as well, one being for $505. Haven't figured out yet whether it was for Hilton cards or Delta cards, I will call them to find out. But it's definitely not for referrals as I didn't have any. Haven't decided yet what I'm going to do about it.

Did you receive any other type of bonus, such as Upgrade or Retention?

So researching this, it appears i did have Hilton card referrals in the beginning of last year that I completely forgot about (doh !), I'm sorry for misinformation, but that's only part of it. What pushed me over $600 limit by less than $5 (limit established by law according to the AMEX rep) is the gesture of good will of $100 that they gave me in lieu of 150k sign-up bonus that they refused to give (had Surpass card before). I requested to speak to a sup basically saying the "gesture of good will" turned out to be a penalty instead, since i'll have to pay almost twice as much in taxes, and I don't appreciate such gesture, take it back. They "escalated" the issue, whatever that means, but I'm not expecting to have much luck. I'm not going to lose sleep over it though, better things to worry about : )

AMEX chat rep just mentioned those not in receipt of a 1099 by 1/31/19 should not expect a 1099.

I could only wish people would get tired of AMEX's rewards shenanigans and just drop them.

It's already bad enough that:

1) Rewards are delayed an additional statement.
2) Citi and Chase now have JetBlue as a 1:1 transfer partner while AMEX sits at 250:200.
3) AMEX makes you pay the federal excise tax when transferring miles (nobody else does this).
4) AMEX has been hit or miss on dining bonus categories.
5) AMEX's bonus exceptions when applying for a card "because you've had too many opened AMEX cards recently," and sometimes denying bonuses when the box doesn't pop up for whatever reason.
6) And now taxing referral bonuses.

You honestly think this was a voluntary thing? Go take a peek in the Chase forum or on DoC or reddit. Chase is 1099ing people too, and including petty things like retention bonus statement credits.

American Express does not tax anything. Receipt of a 1099 does not create a tax liability if none exists. Absence of a 1099 does not mean there is no tax liability. A referral bonus is compensation for helping the card issuer obtain a new customer. The valuation of the points is an open question.

If memory serves, this long running thread has links to legal material on this topic:

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/mile...all-banks.html

The difference is Chase doesn't have the other five problems on top of it.