Tithe vs Zakat: a practical calculator guide

Faithful giving has a math problem: it's simple in principle and slippery in practice. Ten percent of what, exactly? 2.5% measured when? This guide keeps the arithmetic honest — whatever your tradition.

Tithe: ten percent of increase

A tithe is classically 10% of your increase — your income. The practical questions:

• Gross or net? Convictions differ. What matters most is consistency: pick a basis and keep it. If you tithe on net salary, also tithe on net side-income.
• Irregular income? Freelance payments, bonuses, and gifts count as increase when they arrive. The easiest discipline is to compute at the moment money lands, not at month-end from memory.
• The record. A tithe you think you paid and a tithe you did pay drift apart quickly across cash, transfers, and church apps.

If your monthly increase is ₦850,000, the tithe is ₦85,000 — trivially. The hard part is doing it every month, across every income stream, without a ledger.

Zakat: 2.5% of qualifying wealth

Zakat works differently — it's not a slice of income but 2.5% of qualifying wealth held for a full lunar year, once it exceeds the nisab threshold:

1. Total your zakatable assets: cash and bank balances, savings, gold and silver, business inventory, money reliably owed to you.
2. Subtract immediate debts and obligations.
3. If the remainder exceeds the nisab (commonly pegged to the value of 85g of gold — check current prices), you owe 2.5% of it.

Either way, the ledger is the worship's bookkeeper

Both obligations reduce to the same two needs: an accurate base number, and a faithful record of what you've actually given.

Moneytaw handles both. Set Tithe, Zakat, or a custom plan; it computes what you owe from your tracked income or balances, and every payment you log counts against it — so "am I current?" is a glance, not an audit.

This guide covers the arithmetic, not the theology — for doctrinal questions, ask your church leadership or a qualified Islamic scholar.