When is a love gift not considered income and considered a gift tax?

by Emma
(Pittsburgh, PA)

Our church for decades has collected a free will offering at the end of the year to gift to our pastor.

It does not go through the church books at all, handed in as cash, and given to them as cash. No special envelope. It's just blessing the pastor to bless him.

No one receives a receipt for this for tax purposes.

Is it then up to the pastor to claim as a gift?

The debate this year is if we should be putting this through the church books instead... can we continue the way that we have or do we need to amend and fix how we approach this?

Any articles or even tax code sources you could provide would be wonderful! Thank you!