Shares Zakah Accounting in Malaysia: Fatawa, Manual and Practices

This paper aims to analyze shares zakah accounting based on manual, fatawa and practice among investors and traders. According to the calculation of Zakat Management Manual issued by the Department of Awqaf, Zakat and Hajj (JAWHAR), shares held for two purposes: first for investment purposes; and the second for business purposes. The questions arise when the fatawa issued by the State Islamic Religious Councils (SIRCs) in Malaysia only mentioned about shares held solely for business purposes. How about the shares are held for investment purposes? Is zakah accounting for both are the same? Based on the content analysis of secondary data, the discussion of this paper is divided into three parts. The first part will highlight briefly previous literature about shares zakah accounting background. The second part will covers current practices of zakah shares accounting of the states in Malaysia. Final part of this paper will analyze the shares zakat accounting, which should be practiced by taking previous literatures and current practices. This paper argues that by taking into account the purpose of the shareholding, then the zakah accounting shares revaluation is strongly needed as the purpose and intention of holding zakah itself is an important factor in determining accounting zakah for shares.