Tax-free shopping in Japan: how it works in 2026

Tax-free shopping is for foreign visitors on short stays. Look for the red-and-white “Japan Tax-Free Shop” sticker — there were 63,278 licensed stores nationwide as of March 2025, from electronics chains and drugstores to department stores. Tokyo has by far the most, followed by Osaka.

You always need your physical passport with the entry stamp. Registering your passport in the Visit Japan Web app gives you a QR code that speeds up the paperwork at many stores, but it does not replace showing the passport itself.

The tax comes off at the register: spend ¥5,000 or more (before tax) in the same store on the same day, show your passport, and you pay the tax-free price immediately. Two categories of goods have slightly different rules:

• If neither category alone reaches ¥5,000, stores can combine general goods with consumables — the general goods then get sealed and treated as consumables too.
• Department stores usually handle everything at a tax-refund counter: pay full price in each shop, then bring the receipts and your passport to the counter the same day. Some charge a handling fee (Takashimaya, for example, charges 1.55% of the purchase price).

Japan switches from checkout discounts to a refund-at-departure model, closing a long-running loophole that let tax-free goods be resold domestically. The new flow:

1. Pay the full tax-included price in the store (passport still required).
2. At the airport before departure, present your passport at the customs kiosk; customs confirms you are taking the goods out of Japan. This must happen within 90 days of purchase.
3. The store (or its refund operator) pays the 10% tax back to you — by bank transfer, credit card, QR wallet or similar.

• Abolished: the general-goods/consumables split, sealed bags, and the ¥500,000 consumables cap.
• Still being finalized: exactly which refund methods each store will offer, how long refunds take, and what fees refund operators may charge. Expect store-by-store differences in the first months — we’ll update this guide as the details firm up.

• Services: restaurant meals, hotel stays, transport, activities and experiences. The scheme covers physical goods only.
• Gold bullion and similar items designated as high-risk for fraud.
• Anything you buy at a store without the tax-free license — including most small independent shops.

• Don’t open sealed bags in Japan (current system). If you consume tax-free goods before leaving, customs can collect the waived tax at departure.
• Carry the goods when you fly out. If you can’t show them at departure, the tax is collected. Shipping them home separately no longer qualifies.
• Don’t give or resell tax-free purchases before departure — transferring them in Japan is a criminal offense, not just a tax bill.
• Check your home country’s duty-free allowance. Japan waives its tax, but your own customs may charge import duty above a threshold (for example, mainland China’s allowance for returning residents is 5,000 RMB of personal-use goods).

Facts above were checked in July 2026 against primary sources including the National Tax Agency’s scheme pages (NTA No.6559, NTA No.6555), the Japan Tourism Agency’s tax-free shop statistics, the Ministry of Finance’s FY2025 tax reform outline and japan-guide.com’s coverage of the 2026 reform.

Rules and thresholds are representative values at the time of checking and can change; refund-method details for the post-November system are not yet finalized. This page contains no affiliate links; links go to official or primary sources.