They are sometimes the same - often partial gifts. If there is no portion of the payment that is a gift then many places do not even enter it into RE.

We use a gift subtype for these, which helps with some reporting but makes the "last gift" query section completely useless.

Some (most?) event payments contain partial gifts - what would you do then if they were completely separate? This is what campaigns and or funds are for. This is why you have split gifts. No reason to ask the programmers to develop a whole new place to store these transactions.

I'm just going to say that I disagree with any change in basic functionality to allow this. There are enough workarounds (subtypes, funds) to allow event registrations to be removed from reporting.

I do come from a standpoint that event registrations - to the donor - are still "gifts" to the organization. To us on the inside, they show someone's engagement and willingness to spend money on events and support us in a different way than by writing a check and getting a tax deduction.