Towards A Unified Zakat System

It is uncontested that the degree of accountability andtransparency of the Zakat section in the annual reportshould be assessed through auditing. Hence, respondents wereasked who should carry out the task of auditing Zakataccounts. The statistical results are presented in tables6.10(a) and (b).Table 6.10(a)Auditing of ZakatWho shouldFreq. Mean Rank sub-group mean by occupation SD MIN MAX Chi-sq P. valueaudit Zakat AC GV INV AFaccount?Department of 154 4.45 1 4.53 4.41 4.46 4.39. 848 1 5 Zakat. 380 . 944Shariah 159 4.14 2 3.87 4.26 4.32 4.10. 846 1 5 10.4supervisory. 015committeeAccountant 157 3.29 4 3.31 3.18 3.59 3.05 1.05 1 5 5.51from Islamic. 138bankAuditors 158 3.96 3 3.92 3.89 4.27 3.73. 933 1 5 7.28 AC= academics GV= governments IN V=investors AF= accounting firms. 064The overall means from both tables indicate that therespondents either agree or strongly agree with the proposalthat the Zakat section in the annual report should beaudited by either Zakat Department (ranked 1) or the Shariahsupervisory committee (ranked 2). The high means suggestthat the vast majority of respondents strongly agree withthe suggestion for the first two items, but that morerespondents agree strongly in the case of the Department ofZakat. The agreement among the occupation groups is verystrong as indicated by the very high significance statistic.A close look at the individual means in the first item showsthat the means for the four groups (AC, GV, INV and AF) are234