Most Muslims can recite the rate without thinking about it. Two and a half per cent. Far fewer could say what date their own Zakat falls due, and that is usually where the uncertainty sits. Ramadan comes round, the question surfaces, and it gets settled quickly because there is no time to settle it properly.
Zakat does have a due date. It is just that the date belongs to you rather than to the calendar, and once you have worked it out, you have it for life.
What the rule actually says
Zakat is obligatory for every adult Muslim of sound mind whose net eligible wealth has stayed at or above the nisab threshold for one full lunar year. The rate is 2.5% of that net wealth. If your wealth has been below the threshold, no Zakat is due from you this year.
Net eligible wealth is broader than the money in your current account:
- Cash and savings. What you hold in the bank and at home.
- Gold and silver. Held in any form, including jewellery you do not wear.
- Business assets. Stock and money held in a trade.
- Investments. Held wealth rather than the income it produces.
Debts are deducted before the total is worked out. If your affairs are complicated, by a business, a property portfolio or an inheritance being settled, this is the point to ask a qualified scholar rather than to estimate. Getting a figure slightly wrong in your own favour is the sort of mistake worth avoiding.
Finding your own date
Your Zakat year begins on the day your wealth first reached the nisab and stayed there. Twelve lunar months later, Zakat falls due on whatever your wealth is on that day. That anniversary can land at any point in the year, which is why two people in the same household can owe Zakat months apart.
Because the lunar year runs about eleven days shorter than the Gregorian one, your date moves earlier in the western calendar each year. It is worth writing down in the Hijri calendar rather than trying to remember it as a date in March or September.
Many Muslims choose to give during Ramadan for the increased reward, and that is a good habit as long as it does not turn into a delay. Zakat should not be held back once it is genuinely due.
Why you will not find a nisab figure here
The nisab is set at the value of 612.36g of silver or 87.48g of gold. Both of those are weights, so the cash threshold moves with the metal price every day the markets are open.
That is the reason this page does not print a pound figure. A number published today would be wrong within weeks, and a stale threshold on a charity website is worse than no threshold at all, because somebody will work out their Zakat against it and trust the answer. Check the current price of silver or gold when your date comes round, and work from that.
Who is eligible to receive it
Zakat is not general charity, and the difference matters when you decide where to send it. Surah At-Tawbah (9:60) names eight categories: the poor, the needy, those employed to collect it, those whose hearts are to be reconciled, captives, those in debt, the cause of Allah, and the stranded traveller. Money given to someone outside those categories does not count as Zakat, however much good it does.
This is worth asking any charity about before you give. Zakat given to HF Trust UK is kept for people eligible under those eight categories and is not absorbed into general funds. It is distributed by established local teams in Bangladesh who verify eligibility before support is given, and it reaches our food, orphan care, medical, emergency relief and education work.
If no Zakat is due from you
Wealth below the nisab means no Zakat is owed this year, and there is no shortfall to make up. Giving is still open to you as Sadaqah, which is voluntary and carries its own reward.
The same applies in the other direction. Zakat is the minimum owed rather than a ceiling, so anything given beyond the 2.5% is Sadaqah too. Some people work out the obligation carefully, pay it, and then give separately across the year without counting it.
About HF Trust UK
Hazrat Fatimatuzzuhura (RA) Trust U.K. is registered with the Charity Commission for England and Wales, charity number 1142324, and has been registered since 9 June 2011. Our work is in Bangladesh, across education, relief of poverty, health and welfare support for people facing hardship.
If you would like to read more on the obligation itself, our Zakat page covers the conditions and the common questions in more detail.