How to Pay the Zakah on Salaries.

The Shaykh : All right. There is one more matter that people need clarified, which is salaries. The salaries that are paid to a person every month. How does he pay zakah on them? If a man does not receive his monthly salary until he has already spent the previous month's salary. A man whose salary is three thousand riyals and who spends three thousand riyals. The second month does not arrive until he has spent it. Does he owe zakah? No, because the lunar year (hawl) does not complete for him. Another man spends half of his salary and keeps half. So how is the zakah, when the money is renewed every month that comes to him? We say: He has two options. The first option: He calculates what he saves each month, and when the lunar year completes for him, he pays zakah on it. Under this method, he must monitor his money every month. This involves a degree of hardship, and there may be negligence, where a person forgets. Perhaps two or three months pass and he has not paid the zakah. But there is another path that is easier than this. For example: The first salary he received was in Ramadan. We say: When the second Ramadan comes, pay zakah on what you have, even if the lunar year has not completed for it. year. All right, the one whose year has completed clearly paid his zakah at its proper time. And the one whose year has not completed, the zakah on it is paid early, and paying zakah early is permissible. Therefore, if a man's zakah becomes due in Ramadan, and then a poor person comes to him in Sha'ban and says, "I am in need," and he advances his zakah, there is no harm in that. So we say: The second path in the matter of salaries is easier. Look at the first month you started receiving the salary, and make it the start of the lunar year, every year. If a man received his first salary in Muharram, when does he set the lunar year? In Muharram. Whenever Muharram comes, he counts what he has, pays his zakah, and rests. He does not need effort or negligence or anything. This is the best path for salaries. The same applies to rents. Some people have properties, they rent them out, and the periods differ. This rent is at the beginning of the year, this one is in the middle of the year, and this one is at the end of the year; they differ. We say: You now have two options. The first option: To pay zakah on each rent separately. And the second option: To take the first rent, and when the lunar year completes for it, pay zakah on it and advance the zakah on the remainder for which the lunar year has not completed.