When should I pass or return a struct by value?

A struct can be either passed/returned by value or passed/returned by reference (via a pointer) in C.

The general consensus seems to be that the former can be applied to small structs without penalty in most cases. See Is there any case for which returning a structure directly is good practice? and Are there any downsides to passing structs by value in C, rather than passing a pointer?

And that avoiding a dereference can be beneficial from both a speed and clarity perspective. But what counts as small? I think we can all agree that this is a small struct:

struct Point { int x, y; };

That we can pass by value with relative impunity:

struct Point sum(struct Point a, struct Point b) {
  return struct Point { .x = a.x + b.x, .y = a.y + b.y };
}

And that Linux's task_struct is a large struct:

https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/b953c0d234bc72e8489d3bf51a276c5c4ec85345/include/linux/sched.h#L1292-1727

That we'd want to avoid putting on the stack at all costs (especially with those 8K kernel mode stacks!). But what's about middling ones? I assume structs smaller than a register are fine. But what about these?

typedef struct _mx_node_t mx_node_t;
typedef struct _mx_edge_t mx_edge_t;

struct _mx_edge_t {
  char symbol;
  size_t next;
};

struct _mx_node_t {
  size_t id;
  mx_edge_t edge[2];
  int action;
};

What is the best rule of thumb for determining whether a struct is small enough that it's safe to pass it around by value (short of extenuating circumstances such as some deep recursion)?

Lastly please don't tell me that I need to profile. I'm asking for a heuristic to use when I'm too lazy/it's not worth it to investigate further.

EDIT: I have two followup questions based on the answers so far:

1. What if the struct is actually smaller than a pointer to it?

2. What if a shallow copy is the desired behavior (the called function will perform a shallow copy anyway)?

EDIT: Not sure why this got marked as a possible duplicate as I actually link the other question in my question. I'm asking for clarification on what constitutes a small struct and am well aware that most of the time structs should be passed by reference.

On small embedded architectures (8/16-bitters) -- always pass by pointer, as non-trivial structures don't fit into such tiny registers, and those machines are generally register-starved as well.

On PC-like architectures (32 and 64 bit processors) -- passing a structure by value is OK provided sizeof(mystruct_t) <= 2*sizeof(mystruct_t*) and the function does not have many (usually more than 3 machine words' worth of) other arguments. Under these circumstances, a typical optimizing compiler will pass/return the structure in a register or register pair. However, on x86-32, this advice should be taken with a hefty grain of salt, due to the extraordinary register pressure a x86-32 compiler must deal with -- passing a pointer may still be faster due to reduced register spilling and filling.

Returning a structure by value on PC-likes, on the other hand, follows the same rule, save for the fact that when a structure is returned by pointer, the structure to be filled out should be passed in by pointer as well -- otherwise, the callee and the caller are stuck having to agree on how to manage the memory for that structure.