The corpus can tell a Muslim how to pay zakāh on gold, debts and company shares
The corpus can tell a Muslim how to pay zakāh on gold, debts and company shares — but the biggest balances a professional carries today sit in a superannuation fund, a locked pension, a self-directed retirement account, a rental bond, a utility deposit. Resolution No. 143 (1/16) 'Zakāh on Restricted Accounts, Islamic Insurance Companies, Security Deposits, and End-Of-Service Benefits' (16th session, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, 9-14 April 2005) is the Academy's settled ruling on exactly those instruments. It turns every case on one hinge — full ownership: a restricted account you own is zakātable now; an end-of-service fund you cannot control is zakātable once, at the year you receive it; a self-directed retirement account is treated as an investment account and zakātable every year. Fully settled across six heads with no Recommendations section.
What this source says
ZAKĀH ON THE THINGS A MODERN MUSLIM ACTUALLY HOLDS. The corpus's zakāh anchors settle the classical cases — zakāh on debts (Res 1), on leased real estate (Res 2), on company shares (Res 28), on the investment of zakāh funds themselves (Res 15, Res 27). But the largest balances a Muslim professional carries today sit in vehicles the classical books never named: a muḍārabah investment account, a locked employer pension, a self-directed retirement fund, a rental bond, a utility connection deposit, the reserves of a takaful company. Resolution No. 143 (1/16) 'Zakāh on Restricted Accounts, Islamic Insurance Companies, Security Deposits, and End-Of-Service Benefits' is the Academy's settled ruling on exactly those instruments. It 'Resolves' across six numbered heads and carries NO Recommendations section — fully settled in the body, closing on 'Indeed, Allāh is All-Knowing.'
THE INVESTMENT ACCOUNT AND THE CURRENT ACCOUNT (FIRST). The first head disposes of the commonest excuse for skipping zakāh — that the money is locked away. 'Owners of investment accounts are required to pay Zakāh on the balances and profits of their accounts' when the zakāh conditions are met, 'regardless of whether the accounts are long term or short-term accounts, or whether restrictions on their withdrawals are set by the managing party or by the owners of the accounts.' A lock-in does not suspend the duty. The same holds for the everyday account: 'Zakāh is obligatory on the amounts of current accounts, regardless of whether depositing of these amounts is made in anticipation of a future need of the depositor (other than repayment of his debts), or to be used in investment projects.' This is the zakāh counterpart to the muḍārabah investment account defined in Res 123.
THE DEPOSITS YOU WILL GET BACK (SECOND). The second head rules the securities a household or business posts and later recovers — earnest deposits, tender bonds, connection deposits. The 'Margin of seriousness (Hamish al Jidiyyah, i.e., amounts paid as security for covering the potential risk of failing to honor a pledge)', if not itself parked in an investment account, is deducted from the depositee's zakāh base and stays on the depositor's: he pays the zakāh, and 'If several years passed before refunding such securities to their owners, Zakāh should be paid for only one year at the time of refund.' The same one-year-at-refund rule covers the ordinary case: 'securities deposited by individuals and institutions for obtaining telephone, electricity and similar services or renting buildings and equipment, are subject to Zakāh for one year when it is received back.' The earnest money runs the other way — it has changed hands for good: 'The seller should not deduct the earnest money (Arbun) he received from his Zakāh-liable assets. He should pay Zakāh on such a fund because he owns it whether the buyer continues or terminates the contract.'
THE COMPANY'S OWN BALANCES (THIRD, FOURTH, FIFTH). Three heads rule the institution rather than the individual, on one consistent test — you owe zakāh on what you own, and deduct only what is a debt you owe out. A licensing deposit retained temporarily is zakātable as an asset; if retained continuously, the company pays 'for only one year at the end of the retention period' (Third). Reserves and carried-forward profits are the company's own and are zakātable 'when the Current Assets Method of Zakāh calculation is applied' (Fourth). For a takaful operator (Fifth), the pool it merely holds for participants is not its own: 'technical provisions, credit balances of reinsurance companies, payable claims, and claims under the settlement process' are 'deductible from Zakāh-liable assets because they are debts on the company' — while the operator's own 'Reserves, provisions for current risks, additional reserve, life insurance reserve, and the amounts retained from reinsurance' are NOT deducted, 'because the company owns such balances and therefore has to pay Zakāh on them.' This is the zakāh layer beneath the cooperative-insurance fund architecture of Res 200.
THE RETIREMENT QUESTION EVERY WESTERN MUSLIM ASKS (SIXTH). The sixth head is the one a worker with a superannuation, pension, 401(k) or retirement account actually needs, and it turns on a single hinge — full ownership. For the classic end-of-service award, 'It is not obligatory for the worker or employee to pay Zakāh on such an amount throughout his service duration because during the term of his service, he does not have full ownership of the amount.' Zakāh attaches only when ownership crystallises: 'If a decision is taken to calculate the amount and pay it to the worker or employee, in lump sum or in installments at specific intervals, then the worker or employee becomes the full owner of the amount and should, therefore, include it into his Zakāh-liable assets.' The Academy runs the same ownership test through the pension salary, the retirement award and the saving award — and it is the saving award that draws the line a modern reader lives on. Where the fund is self-directed — 'deposited in a special account in the name of the employee or worker so that he can decide the types of investment to which the amount is to be channelled' — 'he should add these funds to his Zakāh-liable assets and pay Zakāh on it, subject to fulfilment of the other conditions of Zakāh': it is treated as an investment account, zakātable every year. But where it is locked out of his hands the rule inverts: 'If, instead, the amount is deposited in an account which the worker or employee has no right to control, the worker or employee should not pay Zakāh on it because he does not yet have full ownership of it. In this case, the employee or worker has to pay Zakāh for only one year at the time of receiving the amount.' That is the whole self-directed-versus-locked distinction in one clause: a fund you steer is zakātable now; a fund you cannot touch is zakātable once, at the end.
WHO NEED NOT PAY. The head closes on the employer side and the public purse. A private employer's un-disbursed end-of-service reserves stay on its own zakāh base — they 'must not be deducted from their Zakāh-liable assets' because they remain under the employer's ownership; but 'As regards public institutions, no Zakāh is payable on such amounts which fall under public ownership.'
HOW TO CITE IT HONESTLY. Res 143 fixes no rate and names no product. It hands a Muslim one test to run across every modern balance he holds: do I own it fully, and is it a debt I owe out? A restricted account is still zakātable if it is yours (an investment account), and merely deferred to a single year at receipt if it is not yet yours (a pension you cannot control). A deposit you will recover is zakātable one year at refund; earnest money you received is zakātable now, because it is already yours. Reserves a company owns are zakātable; the pool it merely holds for others is a debt and is deducted. The resolution decides the framework; it fixes no number, and leaves the rate, the niṣāb and the valuation to the zakāh rulings it sits beside — Res 1, Res 2, Res 15, Res 27 and Res 28.
Wording inside quotation marks is quoted from the source. The rest is this notebook’s summary of it — read the original before relying on it.
Provenance
- Compiled from
- Compiled 2026-07-21 from the International Islamic Fiqh Academy's OWN OFFICIAL ENGLISH text of the resolution. PRIMARY AND SOLE AUTHORITY FOR EVERY VERBATIM SPAN ATTRIBUTED TO RES 143: the IIFA Official Edition (Resolutions and Recommendations of the International Islamic Fiqh Academy, Oct 2021), Resolution No. 143 (1/16). Compiler role limited to selection, translation-faithful quotation and cross-referencing within the corpus; no ruling, figure, rate, niṣāb, scholar, board or product is asserted beyond what the resolution itself states. Every quoted span is machine-verified as an exact substring of the source under a canonical normalisation (build_res143.py, 24/24 spans across three blocks; audit_res143.py re-extracts every quotation from the finished JSON and re-verifies it against the source).
- Source
- PRIMARY TEXT (full title; session, city, country and dates; the 'Resolves' with its six heads — investment/current accounts, recoverable securities and earnest money, legal deposit, reserves and retained profits, Islamic-insurance balances, and end-of-service benefits with the full-ownership hinge and the self-directed exception; and the devotional close). International Islamic Fiqh Academy, Official Edition (Oct 2021). No Recommendations section — the ruling is fully settled in the body. Every verbatim span machine-verified against this source (build_res143.py 24/24 across three blocks; audit_res143.py re-extracts and re-verifies every quotation from the finished JSON). No rate, niṣāb, currency or figure is asserted — the resolution states none, and the corpus's rate/niṣāb anchors (Res 1, 2, 15, 27, 28) sit beside it.
- School / basis
- Comparative fiqh al-muʿāmalāt (zakāh on contemporary financial vehicles) with a PRIMARY OIC collective text. Resolution No. 143 (1/16), 16th session (Dubai, United Arab Emirates, 9-14 April 2005). Rules across six heads: (First) investment and current account balances and profits are zakātable regardless of any withdrawal restriction or the account's term; (Second) security deposits the depositor will recover — margins of seriousness, tender bonds, utility and rental deposits — stay on the depositor's zakāh base and, if held for years, carry zakāh for only one year at refund, while earnest money (arbun) received is zakātable now because the seller already owns it; (Third) a licensing deposit is zakātable as an asset, or for one year at the end if retained continuously; (Fourth) reserves and retained profits are zakātable under the current-assets method; (Fifth) a takaful operator deducts the participants' pool as a debt but pays zakāh on its own reserves and provisions; (Sixth) end-of-service benefits turn on full ownership — no zakāh while the worker lacks control of the fund, then one year's zakāh at receipt, UNLESS the fund is a self-directed account in his own name, which is treated as an investment account and zakātable annually; a private employer's un-disbursed reserves stay zakātable on its own base, and public-owned amounts are exempt. No Recommendations section — fully settled in the body.
- Captured
- 2026-07-21
- Added
- 2026-07-21
- Trust
- Primary or near-primary source with a stable public URL.
Compiler’s note
Added 2026-07-21 (auto-run, P2 corpus). Chosen the instructed way: LISTED content/articles/ and diffed against the source table of contents for a genuinely UNCOVERED, SETTLED, SUBSTANTIVE muʿāmalāt resolution — not a remembered number. Res 143 (1/16) 'Zakāh on Restricted Accounts, Islamic Insurance Companies, Security Deposits, and End-Of-Service Benefits' is the primary OIC anchor beneath the site's EXISTING zakat prose on superannuation / 401(k) / SIPP / RRSP, which until now cited no primary ruling. Re-checked ON DISK: UNCOVERED (no *resolution-143* file; the corpus held zakāh on debts/real estate/shares/zakāh-funds — Res 1, 2, 15, 27, 28 — but NO ruling on investment accounts, recoverable security deposits, takaful reserves or end-of-service/retirement funds), SETTLED (its 'Resolves' rules across SIX numbered heads with eleven lettered sub-points; not a deferral; NO Recommendations section, so FULLY settled rather than merely confined, like Res 130/132/157), SUBSTANTIVE (the full-ownership test a worker with a locked pension versus a self-directed retirement account actually needs). THREE SETTLEDNESS GATES clean on the primary: 0 keyword, 0 paraphrase, 17 operative units (6 heads + 11 lettered); Res 143 carries NO defer/postpone token at all. TWO NEGATIVE CONTROLS, both proven muʿāmalāt-family deferrals: (1) Res 77 (8/8) 'Shareholding in Joint-Stock Companies Dealing with Ribā' caught by the PARAPHRASE gate only ('commission further research') though it carries NO deferral KEYWORD — the Res 200 finding made concrete; (2) Res 122 (4/13) 'Diminishing Mushārakah in light of Contemporary Contracts' caught by BOTH gates (bare 'Postponement'). WHAT IT ADDS: one ownership test across every modern balance — a restricted account is zakātable now if it is yours; an end-of-service fund you cannot control is zakātable once at the year of receipt; a self-directed retirement account is an investment account, zakātable annually; recoverable deposits carry one year's zakāh at refund; earnest money received is zakātable now; a company owes zakāh on reserves it owns but deducts the participants' pool as a debt; public-owned amounts are exempt. One line-break hard-hyphen ('short-term') corroborated as a genuine compound and kept. DROPPED per no-fab: no provider, scheme, scholar, board, figure, rate, niṣāb, threshold, fee, statute or regulator; NO scriptural text; the generic retirement-vehicle categories (superannuation / pension / 401(k) / retirement account) are illustrative reader-labels, not graded products. VERIFICATION: build_res143.py = 24/24 hand-listed spans across THREE blocks (keyed by block; union never used) + both negative-control proofs + the settledness gates. audit_res143.py re-extracts every quotation from the FINISHED JSON on disk and re-verifies against the source (multi-block haystack: Res 143/77/122), 0 waived; no-figure + no-scripture assertions hold. Articles 132->133 (68 IIFA resolutions); corpus total 230->231. Build/lint green (see punch-list). NEXT candidate: keep diffing content/articles/ against the source TOC. Res 140 (6/15) Investment of Waqf, its Yields, and Incomes is uncovered and finance-adjacent — verify a real Resolves and run all three gates. Res 133 (7/14) Problem of Arrears in Islamic Financial Institutions is uncovered/settled but heavily REPRODUCES already-covered Res 10/51/85/109 quotes (poor no-fab candidate — needs careful span discipline). Res 147 (5/16) International Commodities largely reconfirms the covered Res 63. AVOID the whole-subject deferrals already logged (Res 77 (8/8), Res 87 (4/9), Res 122 (4/13), Res 124 (6/13), Res 187 (2/20), Res 188 (3/20)) and Res 237 (8/24) on electronic currencies.
Topics
zakahzakatzakah-on-modern-instrumentsinvestment-accountscurrent-accountsrestricted-accountssecurity-depositsmargin-of-seriousnesshamish-al-jidiyyahearnest-moneyarbunrental-bondutility-deposittender-bondlegal-depositretained-profitsreservesislamic-insurancetakafulreinsuranceend-of-service-benefitssuperannuationpension401kretirement-accountsaving-awardretirement-awardpension-salaryfull-ownershipmilk-tammself-directed-accountone-year-at-receiptpublic-institutionsmuamalatislamic-financezakah-calculatorfully-settledoic-fiqh-academyiifacollective-ijtihadprimary-textresolution-143
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