Ahmed E. Taha (Pepperdine; Google Scholar), Reducing the Costs of Zakāt, 41 Va. Tax Rev. 289 (2022):

Recently there has been increased interest in wealth taxes, which tax the value of personal assets. Although wealth taxes have advantages relative to income taxes, wealth taxes also can create problematic administrative and compliance issues. This article examines a nearly 1400-year-old wealth tax: zakāt, which is a key component of an Islamic socio-economic system and a main form of worship.

The article examines many of the primary traditional zakāt calculation, collection, and distribution practices. It argues that these practices were consistent with largely minimizing the administrative and compliance costs of the zakāt system in the agrarian and mercantile economy of seventh century CE Arabia, sometimes even at the expense of equity. Because of dramatic economic, financial, and societal changes over the last 1400 years, however, many of the administrative and compliance issues regarding zakāt have changed greatly. As a result, the necessary tradeoffs between equity and administrative and compliance costs have been altered as well. This arguably affects how zakāt should be calculated, collected, and distributed today.

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