Do I pay zakat on my monthly salary as soon as I receive it?

No — salary is not zakatable the moment it lands in your account; zakat is due on wealth that reaches the nisab and over which a full lunar year (hawl) passes, so whatever you spend on living costs before the year completes carries no zakat at all. In practice, once your savings first reach nisab you fix that date as your annual zakat date, and on that date each year you pay 2.5% on the whole balance you hold. Most contemporary scholars permit this simplification — paying on the total including recent additions that have not yet completed their own year — because paying zakat early is permissible and it is far easier than tracking a separate hawl for every deposit. The basis is the hawl condition itself, reported in the hadith of ʿAli ibn Abi Talib: "When you have two hundred dirhams and a year passes over them, five dirhams are due on them," a condition the scholars are agreed upon for monetary wealth.

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