Question 13 : Asalamu Alaikum Sheikh and Ramadan Mubarak.

I hope I can articulate my question so it makes sense. Is zakat payable on money that is being pooled together fortnightly as part of a yearly جمعية (collection fund for personal use) in which participating members are paid out the total lump sum for their scheduled month? For example, the last member to be paid out is at the end of 2017 and has now Zakat due at Ramadan of 2017, is there any zakat payable on the lump sum payment?

InshAllah this makes sense, JazakAllah Kheir.

Answer:  Assalamu alaikum Brother,

Ramadan Mubarak for you and all as well!

***Simple summary of Easiest and Best way to give zakat in your situation is as follows***

Each member of this community money saving and sharing program, at Ramadan should add (1) all their money they have, plus (2) gold and (3) silver, then add to it (4) any debts/money owed by others to them till that moment, then give 2.5% Zakat on that resultant total amount.

As an example, If someone’s savings till now are $1000. The gold they own in jewelry is worth $1000. The silver they own in jewelry is $1000. Then in this monthly contributing community saving scheme that person contributes every month $250 and total in one year is $3000 which they will get in one of the 12 months. So lets say by Ramadan this year, the person contributed 4 months of $250 totalling $1000. So the group owes them $1000. Add this $1000 to the previous total of savings + gold + silver of $3000. The total money to their credit is $4000. So they give 2.5% of that which is $100 Zakat this Ramadan.

But lets say this person already received their yearly money of $3000 from the group after only two months, then that means the group not owe them any more money for this year. In fact this person owes the group $250 for each of remaining months especially becaise they already took their turn of $3000. In this case there is nothing owed to this person from the group. Hence their total will he the saving + gold + silver equals $3000. And the zakat on that will be $75.

This way Br Aziz Zizi Manizi is the easiest way instead of calculating what you got extra each month then calculating how much of it remained for 12 months as that will be very hard to calculate. So the easiest is check each Ramadan the total saving of cash, gold and silver plus add how much debts others owe you that they are able to give it to you if you needed it back, then add it all and give zakat on it if it is more than the Nisab. Of course you can give zakat of gold and silver completely separately on their own and of currency separately on its own.

Note:  that the above involves looking at scholars opinions based on Quran, Sunnah and their understanding using Principles of Fiqh regarding matters of loans we owe to others, loans others owe to us, etc. This is because the monthly contribution scheme is like money given to others as loan. And if we already got paid the total in one of the months before end of year, then for the remaining months we effectively owe the group the remaining monthly contributions that they already gave us. What I wrote above is the summary of this whole issue put together in a very simplified manner to make it easy to calculate how much to give the zakat. More complex calculations can be done if the money involved was in millions :-)

And Allah knows best.

Barakallahu feekum wa feena jamee’an. Ameen.