Answered by Shaykh Abu Usamah
Is it me or is the Zakat calculation process complicated? I consider myself literate and intelligent and yet every year zakat calculation does not seem straightforward. If someone like me is having this problem I can imagine people less literate than me really having problems.
1. How is nisab calculated
2. I have two bank accounts, one for regular income and outgoing (current account) and another for savings. My current account fluctuates from an X amount down to occasionally an overdrawn amount. How am I to calculate the minimum amount that I retained for a year on this account.
3. I am a contracted worker. I have had to set up a Limited Company in which I am the director of the said company. When I work on a contract my limited company bills the client for the time that I have spent working. I then draw a salary from the limited company. In the UK according to company law the Limited Company is a separate legal entity and the directors have limited liability. With this in mind after I draw my monthly salary from the said company, there is always a little left over after tax, is this zakatable?
4. If I have £1000 in this zakat year and I pay zakat on it and next year I have the same amount, do I pay zakat on it again?
5. Why is there not a definitive guide to zakat published as this must be a big problem for many people.
Al-Salam `Alaykum
1. Nisab is the monetary equivalent of 87.49g of gold or 613.35g of silver.
2. On your Zakah evaluation date you simply have to total all your Zakatable assets i.e. your credit balance in both accounts + any cash you may have + any gold/silver + …(all Zakatable assets). From this total subtract your liabilities. This will give you a net amount upon which Zakah must be paid.
3. This money will be Zakatable as you are in reality the owner.
4. Yes. Zakah is payable on a person’s assets yearly – rather than only his earnings for that year.
5. There are some guides that have been published here in South Africa. Some are more useful than others. One that is quite useful (although the content sometime needs to be verified by a reliable scholar) is published by the South African National Zakah Fund (Sanzaf). It is a collection of 4 articles on Zakah by different authors. The collection is titled: A Handbook on Zakah.
And Allah Ta`ala Knows Best.
Abu Usamah