Your letters of 24 and 25 May 1993 and the booklet you sent were received by the Office of Huqúqu’lláh. The two questions you raised were referred to the Universal House of Justice, which has now instructed us to send you the following reply.

1.Funds being saved up for the purchase of a residence are not in themselves exempt from Huqúqu’lláh. Thus, if the person were to die before purchasing a residence, these savings would be assessable to Huqúq. However, … it is left to the individual, who is saving to buy a residence, to decide whether to pay Huqúqu’lláh on the money as he saves it, and then count the exemption when the residence is actually purchased, or to postpone the inclusion of the savings in his calculation of Huqúqu’lláh until after the residence is purchased, at which time, of course, the value of the residence becomes exempt.

2….computations for Huqúqu’lláh in practice should be made on the basis of the accumulation of savings, not just on each year separately. Only in this way can one take account of losses in one year which reduce one’s liability in the next, or compute the profit or loss on the sale of an investment which was purchased in an earlier year.