Shares, funds, pensions and crypto. Every question here is one where scholars genuinely differ, so the calculator applies the position you choose and shows what the other one would have given.
1
Shares and funds
Why you hold them decides how they are valued. Bought to sell on, they are stock in trade. Bought to hold, the reasoning looks through the share to what the company itself owns.
2
Pensions and retirement accounts
The question here is not how much is in it but whether you can reach it. Wealth you cannot take possession of is treated differently from wealth you can.
Enter what you hold above and the zakatable total appears here.
This is a calculator, not a fatwa. Every question on this page is one where qualified scholars hold different positions, and the calculator applies whichever you chose rather than telling you which is right. If your holdings are substantial, take the working to someone qualified — the gap between the two positions on shares alone can be several times the amount.
Why this is the hardest part of zakat
Zakat on cash is settled. Zakat on gold is settled. Zakat on a share portfolio and a pension is not, because neither existed in the form we hold them when the rules were laid down, and the reasoning by analogy runs in more than one direction.
This page does not pretend otherwise. It asks which position you follow on each of the three questions that actually move the number, applies it, and then tells you what the alternative would have produced. A page that quietly picked one and reported a single figure would be hiding the most important thing about the answer.
Question one: why you hold the shares
Shares bought to sell on are inventory. They are valued at what they would fetch today, and 2.5% of that is owed. There is no disagreement here — a trader’s stock has always been zakatable at market value, whether it is cloth or equities.
Shares bought to hold are the difficulty. One view looks through the share: owning 0.001% of a company means owning 0.001% of its cash and its warehouse stock, and zakat falls on that rather than on your slice of its buildings and its brand. The other view declines to look through, and assesses the market value you could sell for today. The first is closer to the classical reasoning; the second is simpler and errs toward giving more.
Question two: whether you can reach the pension
Zakat attaches to wealth you own and control. A pension pot that an employer’s rules will not release for thirty years fails the second half of that on the majority contemporary view, so no zakat is due on it until access begins — and from that year onward it is treated like any other wealth.
The more cautious position pays each year on whatever has vested, reasoning that a vested balance is legally yours even if you cannot draw it yet. Both are offered above. If you are close to retirement the difference is small; if you are thirty, it is not.
Question three: gross or net
Where drawing on an account would cost you tax and an early-access penalty, many scholars assess the net — what would actually reach your hand — on the ground that the rest was never yours to take. Others assess the gross balance. Enter the deductions or leave them at zero, depending on which you follow.
One thing is not a matter of opinion: the nisab is measured against your wealth as a whole. A portfolio below the threshold on its own may still be zakatable once your savings sit beside it, which is why this page ends by pointing at the full calculator rather than claiming to be one.