Zakat Consultancy in Saudi Arabia

What Saudi Zakat is — and what this page is not

Zakat in Saudi Arabia is a religious levy that ZATCA also collects as a statutory charge on the Zakat base of a person the regulations treat as Saudi. It is not a second income tax, and it is not a percentage of turnover. The base is built from the statement of financial position under the Implementing Regulation for Zakat Collection, issued by Minister of Finance Decision No. 1007 dated 19/8/1445H. That regulation applies to financial years starting after 1 January 2024 and replaces the previous collection regulation. ZATCA publishes it, including the later amendment by Decision No. 1248 dated 11/10/1446H, on its Zakat regulations page.

This page is the annual Zakat return: who is in the net, how the rate is set, how the base is approached, the 120-day filing window, the certificate banks and tenders ask for, and what to do when an assessment arrives. It is not Saudi VAT. VAT is a tax on supplies, filed on its own return, and it has its own page. It is not Fatoora. E-invoicing is how invoices are issued, not how the Zakat base is computed. It is not the 20% corporate income tax return on the non-Saudi share, which has its own page. Mixing those jobs in one match request, without naming which return is late, is how owners are introduced to a generalist who cannot defend the base.

ISZ Global is a matching portal. We do not calculate your Zakat base, we do not log into ZATCA, we do not pay the charge and we do not object to an assessment. The firm you appoint does that work under its own credentials. You choose the firm. The return, the working papers and the representation stay with them.

Who pays Zakat, and who pays income tax instead

The Implementing Regulation for Zakat Collection defines a Saudi person as someone holding Saudi nationality, and as nationals of Gulf Cooperation Council states who are accorded treatment similar to Saudi nationals. Article 3 brings resident companies into Zakat on the share held by a Saudi shareholder, together with the other categories the article lists. That definition is why a Gulf national who is treated like a Saudi national is not automatically 'foreign' for this return. It is also why the label on a passport is not the whole question: the regulation, not a blog, decides the treatment.

Saudi-owned shares of a resident company are generally subject to Zakat. Non-Saudi shares are generally subject to corporate income tax at 20% of taxable income. Mixed-ownership companies apportion the two. A company that is entirely inside that Saudi definition generally files Zakat on this activity, not corporate income tax. A resident company owned entirely by persons outside that definition generally files corporate income tax. A mixed company files both, split on the ownership ratio. The Commercial Registration, the articles and the ZATCA taxpayer file have to show the same split. If they do not, the return is already wrong before anyone touches the balance sheet.

Listed companies have a further rule in the same regulation for shares held by non-Saudi shareholders, with an exception for certain founders' shares. Oil and hydrocarbon production has its own exclusions. This page will not turn those special cases into a slogan. If your share register includes a listed parent, a government stake, or an activity in oil or hydrocarbons, say so in the match request so the shortlist has filed that case, not only a family trading company.

Residency is its own test in the regulation, for both natural persons and legal persons. A foreign shareholder who visits Riyadh is not, by that visit, the same thing as a Saudi share of the company. Do not let a consultant collapse 'who owns the shares' and 'who is tax-resident' into one sentence. They are written as separate articles for a reason.

The 2.5% rate, and the Hijri-year adjustment

Article 15 of the Implementing Regulation for Zakat Collection (Minister of Finance Decision No. 1007 dated 19/8/1445H, applying to financial years starting after 1 January 2024, as amended by Decision No. 1248 dated 11/10/1446H) levies Zakat at 2.5% of the Zakat base for a Hijri year. If the Zakat payer's fiscal year is not a Hijri year, the percentage equals 2.5% divided by the number of days in the Hijri year, multiplied by the actual number of days in that Zakat year. Read that twice if your year ends on 31 December. Most Saudi companies keep a Gregorian year. They do not pay a flat 2.5% of the base and stop. The regulation prorates. A consultant who types 2.5 into the portal for a Gregorian year, without the day-count, is not applying Article 15.

This page does not publish a substitute rounded percentage for a 365-day year. The formula is the rule. The number of days in the Hijri year, and the number of days in your Zakat year, are inputs the consultant takes from the regulation and from your own year-end, including a short or long first period. Article 15 also treats a fiscal period shorter than 354 days differently at the start of an activity and at the end of an activity. That is a facts question for the first meeting, not a footnote you should ignore because the company 'only traded for a few months'.

The rate is applied to the Zakat base, not to accounting profit and not to revenue. A profitable company can have a small base. A company with a loss can still have a base, because the regulations also set a minimum. Owners who budget '2.5% of profit' are budgeting the wrong thing. Ask for the base, then the rate, then the amount due.

How the Zakat base is built

For a Zakat payer that keeps statutory accounts, the regulation calculates the base from additions and deductions, and then tests the result against a minimum and a maximum. Additions start from equity and its equivalents. The regulation also brings in the difference between accounting profit and the profit adjusted for Zakat, and it has its own placement rules for liabilities: which external liabilities are added, and which are left out because a non-current asset was already deducted or a current asset was not. Deductions are the assets the regulation allows to come off, on conditions. Fixed assets, certain investments and some partner balances are the usual conversation. They are not an automatic minus.

A consultant who copies total equity into the portal has not prepared a Zakat base. The working paper should show each addition, each deduction, the reason it is in or out, and the article it relies on. Related-party loans, provisions, end-of-service balances and long-term payables are where assessments usually start, because the accounting label and the Zakat label are not the same word.

Article 17 of the regulation tells an accounting Zakat payer to take additions and deductions from the values shown in the statement of financial position at the end of the Zakat year. Fair-value movements have their own article. If your auditor and your Zakat preparer disagree about which figure is 'the' year-end number, that disagreement belongs in the working paper before the return is filed, not in a ZATCA query six months later.

The regulation also applies ZATCA's transfer-pricing instructions to transactions with associated persons. A management fee, a shareholder loan or a royalty that is not at arm's length can move both the Zakat base and, on the foreign share, taxable income. Name those charges in the match request. A filer who has never read a related-party schedule is the wrong shortlist if that is your fact pattern.

There is a minimum base and a maximum base in the regulation. This page will not reprint the formulas. They depend on adjusted net profit and on the additions already in the computation, and they are exactly the sort of rule a template spreadsheet gets wrong. Ask the consultant to show you the minimum and the maximum on your numbers, and to say which one binds.

The filing cycle owners actually have to run

Article 102 of the Implementing Regulation for Zakat Collection requires an accounting Zakat payer to submit the Zakat return and pay the Zakat due within 120 days from the end of the Zakat year. If that period ends on an official holiday, the deadline moves to the next working day. A company with a 31 December year-end is therefore looking at a date in late April, subject to that holiday rule. Do not copy a neighbour's date if your year ends in another month. Do not copy the VAT calendar onto Zakat. They are different returns.

The regulation also requires the Zakat payer to register with ZATCA before the end of the first fiscal year, to file the return with the supporting documents the form depends on, to answer what ZATCA asks during a review, and to pay the Zakat due unless an exemption in the regulation applies. Payment goes through SADAD or another channel ZATCA accepts. A return filed without payment is not a finished job, and a payment without a return is not a finished job either.

Supporting clarifications and documents submitted with the return are to be in Arabic, and documents must be presented by an authorised person if they are to be accepted. An English-only pack that the parent company likes is not, by itself, a filing pack. Budget for an Arabic set, or for a consultant who will produce one, before the last week of the 120 days.

The Zakat payer must keep the documents the return relied on inside the Kingdom for at least ten years. ZATCA may ask about them throughout that period. 'We changed bookkeepers and the file is in someone's laptop' is not a retention policy. Put the working papers, the ownership schedule and the filed return where the next consultant can find them.

A sensible cycle looks like this. Close the books. Agree the year-end figures with the auditor, or record in writing where you have not. Prepare the Zakat base from those figures, with the day-count rate and the minimum and maximum tests. Draft the return early enough that you can challenge a classification. File on ZATCA's portal inside 120 days. Pay. Save the certificate and the proof of payment with the pack. If the first draft arrives in the last week, you do not have time to disagree.

The certificate banks and tenders ask for

Filing is not the same document as the certificate counterparties ask for. Banks, government tenders and some licence renewals ask for evidence that the Zakat return has been submitted and the amount paid. Owners often discover the gap when a tender pack is due on Thursday and the return is still a spreadsheet. Tell us if a certificate is the reason you are looking now. That is a dated job, and the shortlist should be people who can finish a return, not people who can only 'advise on Zakat policy'.

A certificate does not freeze the base forever. ZATCA can still assess, and you can still amend. Article 103 allows an accounting Zakat payer who finds an error to request an amendment, and if ZATCA approves, to revise the return within a period not exceeding 30 days. An amendment request made after an assessment has its own controls, including that the request has to be in before the assessment is issued. Do not treat a certificate as a promise that the year is closed.

If a bank or a buyer wants the certificate in order to release a payment, put that date in the match request next to the statutory 120-day date. The earlier of the two is the real deadline. A consultant who quotes only the legal last day, and ignores the tender, is quoting the wrong calendar.

Assessments, objections and what they cost in time

An assessment is ZATCA's decision on the return: it can accept the return, change it, or compute the amount from the information it has. The notification should state the basis of the calculation, the amount, when it is payable, and that you may object. Read it the day it arrives. The clock does not wait for the month-end close.

Article 116 lets a person subject to a ZATCA decision file an objection under the procedural rules of the committees that resolve Zakat, tax and customs disputes. For the objection to be accepted in form, the regulation requires the Zakat payer to pay the Zakat on items that are not in dispute, and either to pay part of the Zakat on the disputed items — a minimum of 10% and a maximum of 25% of those amounts — or to provide a financial guarantee. ZATCA may set further controls. Confirm the current text, and the committee rules, with the consultant before you transfer money. This page is not the place to invent a payment plan.

If you miss the form of the objection, you are no longer arguing the base. You are arguing about whether you are allowed to argue. That is a worse position. Say in the match request if an assessment is already open, and send the notice date. We will look for consultants who have filed objections, not only annual returns. The person who prepared the original return can still be the right person to defend it, but you should hear how they will explain the items ZATCA changed before you reappoint them on loyalty alone.

ZATCA may also resort to an estimated assessment where a return is missing, where requested documents do not arrive, or where it obtains further information, subject to the controls in the regulation, including a warning and the passage of at least 60 days in the case of an accounting Zakat payer. If you have been warned, treat that letter as the job. Do not wait for the estimate.

What usually goes wrong

The first error is treating the Zakat base as accounting equity. Additions for provisions and external liabilities, and deductions that are refused because a condition in the regulation is not met, are where the money is. A portal upload of the trial balance is not a computation.

The second error is mixing Zakat with VAT and with corporate income tax. VAT is a tax on supplies. Corporate income tax applies to the non-Saudi share of taxable income, in the usual case at 20%. Zakat applies to the share the regulation treats as Saudi, on the Zakat base, at the Article 15 rate. One firm can hold all three appointments. The calculations stay separate and the returns stay separate. A fee quote that says 'ZATCA compliance' without naming the returns is a quote you cannot compare.

The third error is a year-end that the Commercial Registration, the auditor and ZATCA do not share. Change the year-end, or the shareholders, in the middle of a year and you have a split computation from that date. Tell the consultant the date of the change, not only the current percentage.

The fourth error is waiting. The 120 days feel long in January. They are short once the audit is late, the Arabic pack does not exist, and a tender wants the certificate. A shortlist request the week the return is due is a request for a rush, and rush work is where classifications get copied from last year.

Riyadh, Jeddah and the Eastern Province

ZATCA is a national authority. The portal is the same. The consultant still has to know how your city actually closes a year. Riyadh groups often have mixed ownership, a parent that wants English working papers, and related-party charges into and out of a holding company. The Arabic filing set still has to exist. Ask who writes it.

Jeddah trading houses and logistics firms more often arrive with import activity, overseas principals and a Zakat base that moves with inventory and partner current accounts. The VAT return and the Zakat return must not contradict each other on who the customer is and where the stock sat. Say if both returns are in scope.

Dammam, Khobar and the industrial corridor sit next to contractors and plants, where the argument is often fixed assets, project provisions and long-term funding. A Riyadh holding-company template copied onto a contracting balance sheet is how deductions get refused. Tell us the city and the activity. We shortlist in that market.

There is a city page for Zakat consultants in Riyadh on this site. Use it when you want the city view. Use this page when the job is the Zakat return itself, wherever in the Kingdom the Commercial Registration sits. If you also have a company in the Emirates, that is a different law and a different authority. Do not ask a Saudi Zakat filer to sign an Emirates corporate tax return on the strength of a ZATCA login.

The bookkeeper, the auditor and the Zakat preparer

The person who keeps the books can prepare the Zakat return if they are competent and you appoint them. They are not automatically the right person to defend the base. They built the labels ZATCA may reject. A second pair of eyes is the point of a separate appointment.

The statutory auditor and the Zakat preparer should not be the same firm for the same entity. The auditor reports on the financial statements the base is taken from. If one office writes the books, signs the audit and files the Zakat return, you have lost the second look that a bank, a buyer or ZATCA will expect. ISZ Global will shortlist auditors on the financial audit page and Zakat consultants on this page. You appoint both. We do not sign an audit opinion and we do not file.

Article 22 points Zakat payers at ZATCA's transfer-pricing instructions for transactions with associated persons. That work may be a third appointment. A fractional finance lead can own the calendar and the pack. They should not be the auditor, and they should not be the only person who understands the base. Write the three roles into the engagement letters before the year-end, not after the assessment.

Owner checklist before you appoint

• Write the ownership split in the words the regulation uses: who is a Saudi person under Article 1, and who is not. Attach the Commercial Registration and the articles.
• Write the year-end and count 120 days. If a bank or a tender wants a certificate sooner, write that date too.
• Say whether the books are closed, whether an auditor is already appointed, and whether that auditor is the firm you were about to ask to file Zakat.
• List related-party balances: shareholder loans, current accounts, management fees, royalties.
• Say whether a ZATCA assessment, a warning or an amendment request is already open, and the date on the notice.
• Separate the Zakat preparer from the statutory auditor before you take the meeting.
• If you also need corporate income tax on the non-Saudi share, VAT or Fatoora, name those as separate jobs in the same request.
• A shortlist the week the return is due is late. Ask anyway, and say that it is late.

Documents to bring to the first meeting

• Commercial Registration, articles and the current shareholder register, with any change during the year dated.
• The last audited financial statements, or the draft the auditor has not yet signed, labelled as a draft.
• The last Zakat return and the certificate, if any, plus proof of payment.
• Schedules for fixed assets, investments, provisions, end-of-service benefits and related-party balances.
• Any ZATCA assessment, warning, amendment approval or request for documents.
• The VAT returns for the same year, if you want the two filings checked against each other.
• A note of which documents exist only in English. Article 99 expects the return pack in Arabic.

Questions to ask before you appoint

• Who will log into ZATCA for this entity, and will the working papers show the Article 15 day-count rather than a flat 2.5%?
• Will you show the minimum base and the maximum base on our numbers, and which one binds?
• How will you treat shareholder loans, provisions and fixed assets, and which article are you relying on?
• Will the filing pack be in Arabic, and who writes it?
• What sits outside the quote: the income-tax return on the foreign share, an objection, a certificate for a tender, transfer pricing?
• On which day will I see a draft, and what happens if I disagree with an addition?
• If you are also offering the statutory audit, how are the two engagements kept independent?
• If an assessment is already open, have you filed objections, and what must be paid for the objection to be accepted in form?

How ISZ Global helps you appoint — and where we stop

Tell us the city, the ownership split, the year-end, whether the books are closed, and whether a certificate, an assessment or an objection is already the reason for the call. Within 24 hours we send two or three consultants who prepare Saudi Zakat returns for businesses like yours. You meet them. You compare the person who will submit, the way they build the base, and the date of the first draft. You appoint. The shortlist is free for owners. Fees are quoted by the firm, by scope. We do not publish a tariff and we do not take a success fee from you.

We do not log into ZATCA. We do not compute the base. We do not pay through SADAD. We do not represent you before the dispute committees. Where a listed firm has a connection to the founder of ISZ Global, that connection is disclosed on the firm's profile so you can weigh it. If you also need a statutory auditor, a corporate income tax return, VAT or Fatoora, those are separate pages and, usually, separate appointments. We would rather make two introductions than one introduction to a firm that will do the second job badly.

This page is Zakat, not the rest of the ZATCA file

Use this page when the job is the Zakat base, the annual Zakat return, the certificate, or an objection to a Zakat assessment. Use the corporate income tax page when the job is the return on the non-Saudi share. Use the VAT page when the job is registration, the periodic VAT return, a refund or a VAT assessment. Use the Fatoora page when the job is linking your billing system. Use the financial audit page when you need a statutory auditor licensed to practise in the Kingdom. The match request should name the job.

Appointing one network for several of those jobs is common, and often sensible, as long as the engagement letter splits them. Mixing the calculations, or letting the bookkeeper appoint the auditor who will review that bookkeeper's work, is how owners lose a second look. We will not put every ZATCA question on one generalist because a single form was easier to send.

Nothing on this page is a Zakat computation for your company. Thresholds, rates and deadlines are ZATCA's, quoted so you can brief a consultant. They are not ISZ Global estimates, and they are not a substitute for the regulation. If a sentence here and the regulation disagree, the regulation wins, and you should tell us so we can correct the page.

Sources

• Article 15 of the Implementing Regulation for Zakat Collection (Minister of Finance Decision No. 1007 dated 19/8/1445H, applying to financial years starting after 1 January 2024, as amended by Decision No. 1248 dated 11/10/1446H) levies Zakat at 2.5% of the Zakat base for a Hijri year. If the Zakat payer's fiscal year is not a Hijri year, the percentage equals 2.5% divided by the number of days in the Hijri year, multiplied by the actual number of days in that Zakat year. Source: ZATCA — Implementing Regulation for Zakat Collection, Article 15 (https://zatca.gov.sa/en/RulesRegulations/Taxes/Pages/ZakatRegulations.aspx). Last reviewed 2026-10-30.
• Article 102 of the Implementing Regulation for Zakat Collection requires an accounting Zakat payer to submit the Zakat return and pay the Zakat due within 120 days from the end of the Zakat year. If that period ends on an official holiday, the deadline moves to the next working day. Source: ZATCA — Implementing Regulation for Zakat Collection, Article 102 (https://zatca.gov.sa/en/RulesRegulations/Taxes/Pages/ZakatRegulations.aspx). Last reviewed 2026-10-30.
• The Implementing Regulation for Zakat Collection defines a Saudi person as someone holding Saudi nationality, and as nationals of Gulf Cooperation Council states who are accorded treatment similar to Saudi nationals. Article 3 brings resident companies into Zakat on the share held by a Saudi shareholder, together with the other categories the article lists. Source: ZATCA — Implementing Regulation for Zakat Collection, Articles 1 and 3 (https://zatca.gov.sa/en/RulesRegulations/Taxes/Pages/ZakatRegulations.aspx). Last reviewed 2026-10-30.
• Saudi-owned shares of a resident company are generally subject to Zakat. Non-Saudi shares are generally subject to corporate income tax at 20% of taxable income. Mixed-ownership companies apportion the two. Source: ZATCA — Income Tax and Zakat (https://zatca.gov.sa/en/RulesRegulations/Taxes/Pages/default.aspx). Last reviewed 2026-10-28.
• Registration before the end of the first fiscal year, Arabic supporting documents, the ten-year retention duty, amendment within 30 days of ZATCA's approval, and the conditions for an objection to be accepted in form (payment of undisputed Zakat, and 10% to 25% of the disputed Zakat or a financial guarantee) are taken from the same Implementing Regulation for Zakat Collection as published by ZATCA (https://zatca.gov.sa/en/RulesRegulations/Taxes/Pages/ZakatRegulations.aspx). ZATCA portal: https://zatca.gov.sa.