In your country is Zakat automatically deducted from your income tax, or do you do it all yourself?

As Salaam to you all,

Zakat is payable on what you have in the bank, holdings and jewelry at 2.5% if you have had it for at least one year. It is not payable on what you have earned, without deductions for your living expenses.

If you have $1,000 and your rent, food and utility bills come to $900 for the month, then you pay 2.5% on the remaining $100 if you have held this amount for one year.

Payment of Zakat is to the poor within the area that you live, be they believers or not. It can be paid to your family members if they are poor but it must go to the needy. So if you have family (believers) who are poor but there is a family (non-believers) poorer than them next door, then pay the Zakat to the non-believers. (The rewrad can be twofold, in that you feed the hungry and they may become Muslims by your charity and Allah (SWT) knows best.)

There is no country who deducts money through income tax as Zakat but rather leave it up to the individual to pay what is right.

The Amadiyyah sect actuall collect 2.5% monthly as Zakat, which is totally against Islam and its teachings. So any sect which asks for a monthly payment of Zakat is wrong.

To distribute Zakat outside to your families native country is wrong, unless all the poor have been catered for within your own area first. Even a small percentage sent abroad is wrong.

The same can be said for missing a fasting day during Ramadan and the feeding of people in penance, rather than making it up. People think that it is okay to send the money abroad and therefore it will cost less to feed the required amount of people. How wrong these people are, for they have negated the rules of Islam and have wasted their efforts to fast and pay homage to Allah (SWT).

The sending of money abroad wastes time and costs even more money in the long run. The importance of feeding the hungry is so that receive it at the end of the day, when we break our fast but if it is sent abroad, then several days will have elapsed before the poor receive benefit.

Read. learn and believe that Islam is simple but it is man that makes it difficult.

Wa Salaam

Zakat is not limited to just income, but it is also applicable on other forms of wealth as well (jewelry, property, bank accounts, etc.)

There are not causes for Zakat. The first place Zakat money should go to are the needy or orphan in one's own family, then to the needy in one's own community, and then to the needy worldwide. Often we give a portion of the Zakat money to those who are eligible to receive it within our own families, and give the remainder to the Masjid to distribute to the needy in the community.

Zakat Calculator: http://www.thezakat.org/zakat-calculator.aspx

In my country,zakat is deducted from our savings account on the first of Ramadan.I don't trust my government so I take out the zakat myself too.

How can zakat be automatically deducted since you're the only one who knows your full financial situation?

No Zakah we pay it ourselves . Poor family relatives are the one who are having first priority , then the orphans , then the poor as a general . Zaka money can go to anything that serves the community but I prefer to give it to the orphans and the poor.

I live in a non muslim country..so we give zakat on our own...

Well,to choose among different causes,i'ld like to give preference for students who need aid to complete education and girls who need financial help to get married..(in india,girl's parents has to give loads of money to groom,no matter even if he is a beggar)...

I live in the U.K and we have to do it ourselves... I pay zakat and sadaqa to the Palestinian cause.... this involves healthcare, money for orphans and widows and emergency relief money.

www.interpal.org

its 2.5%, I come from Maldives which is a 100% muslim country and here we have to do it ourselves

in the U.S my father sends money to my coutry and then tells my uncles to giv it to the poor people there

im pretty sure we do it ourselves, palestine