Jurisprudential Feasibility of Khums and Zakāt Payers’ Tax Exemption in the Islamic Government by Taking an Approach to the Thoughts of Imam Khomeini

Khums and zakāt are fixed taxes which must be paid for God’s sake and seeking proximity to God. The Shiʻa (Twelvers’) jurisprudents widely hold the view that tax payments that are done for God’s sake can be optional and personal and they hardly believe that Islamic taxes all belong to the Imams. Unlike this widely accepted view, Imam Khomeini explicitly asserts that monies paid as khums or zakāt are government budget and belong to the ruler of the Muslim community. Along with fixed taxes, people are obliged to pay unfixed taxes to their governments. If an Islamic government forms and people still are obliged to pay the two kinds of taxes, tax variation will occur according to which some people think it their legal or civil duty to pay taxes and others feel they are legally obliged to pay them. Due to these two payments at the same time, additional economic pressure imposes itself on certain classes of people in society who are religious, which brings about social discrimination. Drawing upon a descriptive-analytic method, the findings of the research suggest that those people who have paid their religious taxes under the Isalmic government and, because of this, they may have to shoulder the additional economic burden, can be declared exempt from paying certain common taxes. The aims of this research are to inform the addresses of the ways to prevent taxes of some kind at the same time, to eliminate discrimination, to pay taxes for God’s sake, and to reduce the cost of being religious in Islamic society.