Money given to me for our Priest

[pcu55303]

I had a member of our Church hand me a $500 check and said that it was for the Priest, a Christmas gift made anonymously. I was wondering how to correctly handle this situation. My thought was that I enter it into the contributions module under our gifts/memorial contribution fund and then write a check to the Priest that "takes" the funds from the Gifts/Memorial fund.

I don't think it goes through payroll because the Church isn't paying him this money.

Am I on the right track?

Thank You!

[Jeff]

You need to be careful with this. Take a look at the following links, they say that "gifts" to the pastor are taxable and would be treated as payroll.

http://www.ecfa.org/Content/Gifts-Desig ... r-a-Pastor
http://www.churchsafety.com/topics/mone ... ml?start=1

[GraceBrunswick]

Jeff's right, you need to treat this as taxable income to the priest. If that money were to go to the discretionary fund, that's a different situation.