Japan's Tax-Free Reform, 1 Nov 2026: What Happens at the Airport and Which Step Voids Your Whole Refund

On 1 November 2026 Japan stops deducting consumption tax at the till. From that date the country runs what its own official Chinese-language leaflet calls the pay-first, refund-later method (リファンド方式 in Japanese): you pay the full tax-inclusive price in the shop, complete a customs export confirmation on your way out of the country, and the shop — not the government, not customs — refunds the tax afterwards. The part worth your attention is not the old-versus-new table every other guide leads with. It is where you have to stand at the airport and in what order: the check happens landside, before security, and it must be finished before you drop your bags, because Japan states in writing that checked baggage cannot be retrieved. Add one rule the old system never had — customs confirms per receipt, and if one item on a receipt is missing, the whole receipt is refused — and you have the three things this guide covers.

The airport walkthrough, in order

Start with the detail that wastes entire refunds: the new procedure happens before security and before you check in your luggage. The four-ministry traveller leaflet says it outright — the customs check takes place before the security checkpoint, in the landside area of the international departures hall. That is the exact inverse of the mental model most travellers carry, which is a refund desk somewhere airside, after immigration, near the duty-free shops.

Why does the order matter so much? Because Japan's answer to "what if I already checked the bag" is one sentence with no follow-up: checked baggage that has been handed over cannot be retrieved. There is no recovery path. The moment your suitcase full of tax-free purchases rolls away from the check-in desk, those goods can no longer be presented — and under the per-receipt rule in the next section, everything sharing a receipt with them goes down too.

Step by step

1. Locate a tax-free procedure kiosk in the departures hall. Japanese documents call it the 免税手続用の端末 — a self-service electronic terminal, sited before the security checkpoint. Go there before check-in.
2. Read your passport at the terminal. The shop already sent your purchase record to the tax authority electronically when you paid, so the machine matches your passport against that data. Nothing you were handed in the shop is required here.
3. Read the result. The screen tells you whether a customs inspection is needed. Green: you are finished — go and check in. Red: take the goods to the customs inspection area. Japan's own figure for the terminal itself is "a few seconds" from passport scan to result; the only time sink is queueing after a red light.
4. If red, be able to produce the goods. Which is the whole reason tax-free items cannot go into the hold before this step. Note what that does and does not mean: the kiosk and customs come before bag drop, so the goods must still be on you at that moment — but once you are through, knives, aerosols, liquids over 100ml and spirits above 24% ABV all have to go in the hold. Security does not wave liquids through for being duty-free, and a large bottle of sake you insist on carrying will be taken off you at the checkpoint. Checking them does not undo the tax-free procedure — customs confirmed the export before you reached the bag drop. For what cannot be carried on, see our guide to Japan's airport baggage rules.
5. Only then check in and clear security. That is the end of the airport side — and you leave it without any money. The kiosk and customs confirm export; paying you is a separate, later transaction with the shop.

Seven airports let you do it online instead

At Narita, Haneda, Kansai, Chubu, Fukuoka, New Chitose and Naha, you can complete the procedure through Visit Japan Web instead of queueing at a physical terminal, using the dedicated wireless network zone in the international departures hall (again, only up to the security checkpoint).

Two things to know before relying on it. First, you must be registered on Visit Japan Web before you receive the customs confirmation — signing up once you are standing in the hall is too late. Second, the online route shows you what the kiosk cannot: your purchase history at tax-free shops, and which purchase records have cleared customs and entered the refund process. The kiosk only gives you a green or red light, never the itemised list. Note the incidental implication too: that area comes with its own official Wi-Fi for the procedure, so there is no need to arrange connectivity specifically for this step.

The edge cases Japan has already answered

• Domestic connection to an international flight: do it at the airport you actually depart Japan from, not where your domestic leg starts.
• Cruises: a cruise that began overseas — complete it at the final Japanese port, before checked baggage. A cruise starting and ending in Japan (fly-and-cruise) — you do it only when you finally leave by air, not when the ship sails.
• Lost and reissued passport: use the new passport at the terminal and declare at a customs counter that the old one was also used for tax-free purchases.
• Missing your flight mid-inspection: Japan states this does not count as having received the customs confirmation. No confirmation, no refund. It also states that where the tax-free procedure prevents you from departing, neither the airline nor customs provides any compensation — budget time for this step.
• Single items over ¥1,000,000 pre-tax: the shop must transmit detailed product information such as serial numbers, and customs may ask you to show an appraisal certificate or warranty alongside the item. Pack the paperwork in your carry-on.

One more that deserves emphasis: failing to take the goods out is not merely a tax adjustment. Japan collects the equivalent consumption tax immediately and the act falls under the penal provisions of the Consumption Tax Act (Article 65(1)). That is statute, not a scare line.

One receipt, all or nothing

If you take one thing from this page, take this. Japan performs the export confirmation per purchase — one purchase record, which in your hand is one receipt. The governing interpretation is blunt: if any single tax-free item on that receipt is not with you, none of the items on that receipt can be confirmed.

Not "that item is excluded". The whole receipt.

The old system had nothing like it, because the exemption was already complete at the register; customs was only looking for anomalies afterwards. Under the new system the exemption does not exist until the confirmation happens, so the confirmation's unit of measurement became the transaction.

Where this actually bites

• One large outlet or department-store receipt. Same shop, same day, high value, mixed contents. One item handed to a friend in Japan or packed into the hold takes the entire receipt's 10% with it.
• Drugstore hauls. Skincare going home, plus an energy drink you fully intend to open on the train. Opening it kills the receipt, not the drink.
• Gifts given while you are still in Japan. They will not be leaving with you, so nothing on that receipt qualifies.

The fix is to split transactions on purpose. Put things that will definitely go home untouched on one receipt; put anything you might open, eat or give away on another — or simply do not claim tax-free on that batch. It costs two extra minutes at the till and it caps your downside. The ¥5,000 same-shop, same-day total still accumulates across the day, so splitting will not cost you the threshold; just make sure each receipt is independently verifiable.

This is not an inference on our part — Japan's own Q&A works the example: a shop sells you item a, then later sells you item b as a separate transaction, and at departure you have only a. The result is "customs confirmed" for a and "not eligible for exemption" for b. Item a is refunded. Splitting genuinely works within the rules.

Used vs consumed: the distinction almost everyone gets backwards

An earlier version of this page told you to keep tax-free goods unused. That was wrong, and it is corrected here. Japan draws the line in a different place entirely:

• Consumables actually consumed in Japan — food, drink, cosmetics, medicines — kill that receipt's claim. In this situation Japan tells you specifically not to use the kiosk and instead to declare the consumption at a customs counter in person.
• Non-consumables used in Japan are fine. The wording is explicit: items other than consumables may still receive the confirmation even if they were used domestically, provided they are ultimately taken abroad.

So the widely repeated instruction to "keep everything sealed and unused" is simply false for non-consumables. Wear the coat you bought in Sapporo for the rest of the trip; it still qualifies.

The real hazard is elsewhere: do not discard packaging. Japan warns that separating goods from their boxes, or binning packaging that carries the model number, may leave customs unable to identify the item — in which case it will not be confirmed. The recommendation is to keep goods "in the condition purchased". Note what has quietly happened here: the old sealed bag was an annoyance, but it was also a physical reminder. The new system removed the reminder and kept the consequence.

Getting your money back: who pays the handling fee?

The most counter-intuitive finding in this rewrite: on the question of how the money actually reaches you, Japan has regulated almost nothing.

The shop pays you, not the state

Under the new system the party that refunds you is the tax-free shop itself, or a refund operator it has contracted. Customs' only job is confirming export, which is what makes the exempt sale valid; after that the shop returns the consumption tax to you. That single design decision is why every practical detail below ends in "it depends on the shop".

Where do you register your refund method?

Japan's traveller leaflet describes the purchase step as buying at the tax-inclusive price while registering your credit card or other refund account details, and the tourism agency Q&A says the shop will explain this at the time of purchase. This is a meaningful behavioural change: under the old system the shop only needed to see your passport; now you also have to decide how the money comes back.

The deadline for that registration is set by whichever refund operator the shop contracts, and some allow you to register before or after the customs confirmation rather than at the till. But nobody will remind you a second time, so ask at the register and get it right there.

The examples Japan gives are bank transfer, credit card refund, app-based transfer, and cash at the departure airport. They are illustrations, not a menu you can demand. The underlying position is that consumption tax law establishes no rules whatsoever for the refund method — followed, in three separate official places, by the same sentence: refund methods vary by shop; please ask the tax-free store.

Processing time: no official number exists

The tourism agency's entire answer is that the refund is made by the tax-free shop after the customs confirmation at the port or airport has made the exempt sale valid, and that you should ask the shop for details. No days, no range, no cap. The previous version of this page said "generally a few days to a few weeks" — that figure had no official basis and has been removed.

Handling fees: who pays, and how much?

Japan says there is "no particular rule", and adds that other countries usually charge the traveller. Contracting the refund out to an operator generates a refund handling fee, and the tourism agency's Q&A answers the question head-on: whether that fee falls on the traveller or is absorbed by the shop is not specified, and is for the shop and its operator to negotiate — with a note in brackets that in other countries it is generally borne by the traveller.

The one thing Japan does commit to is that the government itself levies no handling fee; nothing is charged at the airport. Rates, caps and which shops waive them are outside the scope of the rules entirely, so no nationwide figure exists. Any specific percentage you see is one shop's or one operator's commercial terms, not the system. The only moment you can find out is when you register your refund method at the till.

Three more blanks worth knowing

• 🔴 The refund does not have to be money. Japan explicitly permits a shop to refund you with coupons or points usable only at specific facilities, and also permits refunding more than the consumption tax (treated as a discount on the base price). So "you get 10% back" does not mean 10% in cash onto your original card — check what you are agreeing to when you register.
• Some shops may refund on the spot. Japan permits a shop to refund before it receives the customs confirmation data — but that is a commercial risk the shop chooses to take (if you never clear customs, the shop loses the exemption). It is not a guarantee of the system, so do not plan around it.
• Refunds can fail permanently. Where a refund cannot be paid for reasons on your side, such as wrong account details, the shop books the amount as miscellaneous income. Japan sets no rule on how long you have, and in fact suggests shops agree a deadline with you at purchase, along the lines of "no refund if not claimed within X days". And if you never register a refund method at all, the shop still keeps its exemption as long as it holds the customs confirmation data — nobody is obliged to chase you. Read what you are signing at the register.

The operator side has started to take shape: the national tax-free retailers' association now publishes a list of 11 approved transmission operators expected to handle refunds (as of March 2026), and the National Tax Agency links to it — while attaching a disclaimer that inclusion on the list does not represent any government approval or guarantee. So you can find out who is in this business; what you cannot find out in advance is which one your shop uses and whether it will charge you. That question belongs at the register.

What stayed, what was abolished, what is new

Unchanged: the ¥5,000 minimum, still judged pre-tax

Japan's official comparison table marks this row "no change": same shop, same day, ¥5,000 or more, pre-tax. The assessment basis is still the pre-tax figure even though the amount you hand over is now tax-inclusive. A ¥5,000 pre-tax basket (¥5,500 at the till) clears the bar.

If you shop several stores in one mall and none of them alone reaches the threshold, the existing workaround survives: combining pre-tax totals from multiple shops in the same commercial facility through its tax-free service counter still counts toward the threshold under the new system.

Five things abolished

• The general goods / consumables split. Everything counts toward one total, so ¥3,000 of clothing plus ¥2,500 of skincare now clears the threshold.
• The ¥500,000 daily cap on consumables.
• The sealed-packaging requirement for consumables.
• The "goods for ordinary daily use" purpose test. Staff no longer assess what you intend to do with the item.
• The non-business-use confirmation.

The export window actually widened: 30 days becomes 90

This is the clearest traveller-side improvement in the reform. Old rules gave consumables 30 days from purchase to leave Japan. New rules give every category 90 days, counted from the day after purchase — buy on 1 November and your deadline is 30 January the following year. For long trips, and for anyone who buys on one visit and flies out on the next, that is real flexibility.

The one new restriction

In place of the abolished purpose tests, Japan added a quantity rule: you may only buy the amount you can personally carry out yourself at departure. It gives customs a basis for judging obviously non-personal volumes. Separately, the list of ineligible goods gained gold and platinum coins; gold and platinum bullion and non-taxable items were already on it. Only the bullion and the coins themselves are caught — Japan states explicitly that worked pieces such as an 18-karat gold or solid platinum necklace remain eligible.

Old vs new: the corrected table

Who qualifies — including Japanese passport holders

Correcting something I stated confidently and got wrong: holding a Japanese passport does not disqualify you, and it never did, including under the old system.

Eligibility runs on the non-resident definition in Article 6(1)(vi) of the Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Act, and Japan's Q&A states explicitly that nothing in that definition was amended by this reform. Nationality is not the test; where you actually live is.

Non-Japanese nationals

• Status of residence of Temporary Visitor, Diplomat or Official; or holders of landing permission for port of call, ship tourism, transit, crew, emergency or distress; or US forces personnel under SOFA.
• Common requirement: less than six months since entry (diplomatic, official and US forces categories excepted).
• Documents: passport (the passport details carried in a Visit Japan Web QR code are also accepted) plus the landing permission seal. Landing-permission categories additionally need the permit itself.

⚠️ Note where this gate sits: it decides whether a shop may sell to you tax-free, not whether the airport will refund you. The departure kiosk only reads your passport to confirm the goods are leaving; it never looks at your entry stamp. Japan's official eligibility flowchart for foreign nationals puts “confirmation of the landing permission seal, etc.” second, and it accepts any one of three: the landing permission seal in your passport, a Registered User Card (the Trusted Traveler Program card that goes with automated gates), or the Visit Japan Web tax-free QR code (which is only displayed to people who qualify). With none of the three, the flowchart's outcome is a flat “no tax-free sale”.

So “an automated gate ruins it” is overstated for non-Japanese travellers: with a TTP card, or a tax-free QR generated in Visit Japan Web, you are fine. The real problem is having none of the three, in which case ask an officer for a stamp as you clear immigration. And be aware the Visit Japan Web QR is not universally supported — we work through a concrete case in our Muji tax-free guide, where the retailer states in writing that it does not yet accept that QR code, making a physical passport the only route.

Japanese nationals

A Japanese national qualifies when both of these hold:

• Non-resident status, with a residence outside Japan continuously for two years or more; and
• this temporary return home has lasted under six months.

Documents: passport plus one of a certificate of residence issued abroad, a copy of the family register attachment, or a My Number card. The reform actually relaxed this side: the document no longer needs to state your registered domicile, the My Number card was added as an option (including the smartphone version, for those registered as having moved abroad), and the two-year test is now measured from the overseas move-out date to your latest entry.

Two hard blocks. First, any Japanese resident registration within those two years disqualifies you completely. Second, an automated gate leaves no returning-entry stamp — and here the picture differs from the foreign-national route above: the official flowchart for Japanese nationals offers no TTP card and no Visit Japan Web QR as substitutes. The stamp is the only door. The same chart spells out the remedy: after passing the gate, ask an immigration officer and they can add the stamp. It also states plainly that another country's departure stamp will not do.

Shopping either side of 1 November

One test decides it: the date the goods are handed over. Japan states in writing that it runs from the sale date and explicitly not from the traveller's departure date. So the popular formulation — "leave before the end of October and you get the old system" — is wrong, and the coupons pages here carried that error until this rewrite.

There is also no transitional period. The official wording is that no period exists in which the current system and the pay-first method run in parallel; the switch is at 00:00 on 1 November 2026. The single exception is technical: a shop whose existing accounting cut-off books a 00:00–01:00 sale on 1 November as a 31 October sale may apply the old rules to it. Late-night megastores will encounter this, but it is the shop's accounting basis, not your choice.

For a trip straddling the date, that means:

• Bought on or before 31 October: exempted at the till, pre-tax price paid, and nothing to do at the airport. Sealed bags still cannot be opened, and the 30-day consumables window still applies.
• Bought from 1 November: tax-inclusive price paid, and the airport step is mandatory.
• You will be holding both kinds of receipt. Only the November ones need the kiosk, but if you cannot tell them apart, carry everything in hand luggage and present the lot.

A blunt piece of advice for anyone whose trip brackets that date and who plans to spend seriously: front-load the shopping into 31 October or earlier. You keep the 10% immediately rather than fronting it, and you avoid betting on a refund process whose shop-level practice is still far from uniform. That is the only "buy now" sentence in this guide, and it only holds for this one window.

Who is better off, who is worse off

Japan does not offer a verdict. The four-ministry material describes the mechanism and nothing else; the stated aims are curbing abuse and reducing the administrative load on retailers. So what follows is our judgement, built only on the facts above.

If you buy things and take them home untouched, the new system is looser

• The threshold is easier to reach now that categories combine, and ¥5,000 itself did not move.
• No more un-openable sealed bag, so packing is simpler.
• No ¥500,000 consumables ceiling.
• Ninety days to export instead of thirty.
• No staff judgement about what the purchase is for.

If you were counting on that 10% as spending money, it is clearly worse

• Cash flow. You front the full tax and wait until after you are home. A ¥300,000 haul means fronting ¥30,000.
• An extra airport step, locked in before bag drop — one more thing to budget time for on a tight connection.
• The per-receipt rule, which the old system did not have.
• Consumed consumables kill the receipt, with no sealed bag as a reminder.
• Discarded packaging can make an item unidentifiable.
• Method, timing and fee rates have no nationwide answer — and Japan has already flagged that other countries put the fee on the traveller.
• What comes back may not be cash, but coupons or points usable only at specific facilities.
• Refunds can fail outright (wrong details, no method registered, shop-set claim deadlines).
• Failing to export triggers immediate collection and penal provisions.

In one line: the reform converts "saving money" into "getting money later, with several failure points you now own personally". The more you spend, the tighter your schedule, and the more you like opening things in Japan, the worse it lands.

What the old system actually looked like

Worth documenting here, because it explains the new design — and because the "old system" most travellers picture stopped existing five years ago.

The familiar picture — filling in a paper tax-refund form, signing a purchaser's pledge, a clerk stapling a purchase record slip into your passport or stamping it — was abolished on 1 October 2021, when tax-free procedures went fully electronic. From October 2021 through 31 October 2026, the genuine old system worked like this:

1. Tell the cashier you want tax-free.
2. The cashier scans or reads your passport (or the Visit Japan Web passport QR, where supported).
3. The purchase record is transmitted electronically to the National Tax Agency. Nothing is stamped into or attached to your passport.
4. General goods and consumables are counted separately, each needing ¥5,000; consumables also carry the ¥500,000 cap and go into a sealed bag.
5. The tax is deducted at the register, so you pay the pre-tax price.
6. Consumables leave Japan within 30 days.

Which means the claims that "a tax-free stamp in your passport blocks a second claim" or "you can only claim once per shop per day" have had no basis for years. The actual constraint has always been the ¥5,000 combined same-shop, same-day total, not a count of transactions.

Which shops, and how to spot them

First, kill a rumour that will circulate in November: shops do not have to re-apply, and no shop loses tax-free status on 1 November. Any shop holding a licence on 31 October 2026 is automatically treated as licensed under the new system. The only licences that lapse belong to shops that never filed the notification for electronic transmission of purchase records — a category that can barely process tax-free sales today anyway. The shop classifications were also simplified: the general/agent-type distinction is gone, leaving "general type" and "vending machine type".

The direct consequence is that no list of "shops ready for the new system" exists or can exist, because every existing tax-free shop carries over. What you can still identify from the pavement is the "Japan. Tax-free Shop" logo. Anything about that shop's refund method or fees is, in Japan's own words three times over, a question to ask the shop. Asking one extra question at the register is the highest-yield thing you can do under the new rules.

Two smaller notes:

• Convenience stores are mostly not tax-free shops, and it is rare to hit ¥5,000 pre-tax in one konbini basket anyway. Their value proposition is unrelated to tax — see our Japanese convenience store guide.
• Airside duty-free is a different animal. Those goods never carried consumption tax, so there is nothing to refund, and airport pricing is frequently higher than downtown. Do not re-buy there because the sign says "free".

One thing this page deliberately does not cover: the passport discount coupons individual chains stack on top of tax-free. Those live in our Japan discount coupons guide, with every chain's live coupon collected on the coupons hub. Note one knock-on effect of the reform: the coupon comes off first, you pay the discounted tax-inclusive price, and the refund is the tax on the discounted figure — not on the list price. Customs allowances on the way home are a separate system entirely; if you are returning to Taiwan, see the Taiwan customs and duty-free allowance guide. For general pre-trip preparation, start at Japan essentials.

Japan also produced short multilingual explainer videos; the English version is on YouTube and runs about two minutes — more authoritative than any guide, this one included.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1：What exactly do I do at the airport from 1 November 2026?

Before you check in your luggage, find a tax-free procedure kiosk in the international departures hall — it sits in the landside area, before security, not after immigration. Put your passport on the reader. Within seconds the screen shows one of two results: green means the export confirmation is done and you can go and drop your bags; red means you carry the goods to the customs inspection area first. Three things travellers get wrong: the step happens before bag drop (Japan states plainly that checked baggage cannot be retrieved once handed over), the kiosk reads your passport rather than any code the shop gave you, and no money is paid at the airport — the kiosk only completes the customs confirmation.

Q2：Do I scan a tax-free QR code at the airport?

No. Under the new system the shop transmits your purchase record electronically to the National Tax Agency at the register. You are never issued an airport-side refund code. The kiosk reads your passport. The Visit Japan Web QR code does exist, but its purpose is to present your passport details in the shop — it is a convenience at the till, not a boarding-side voucher, and not every tax-free shop supports it. On receipts: Japan states explicitly that holding or presenting a receipt is not strictly required at the kiosk or at the customs inspection area, though customs may ask to see one, so keeping them makes things smoother. What matters is that the check is performed per receipt — that is about granularity, not about carrying paper.

Q3：What happens if one item on a receipt is not with me?

The entire receipt fails, not just that item. Japan performs the export confirmation per purchase — one purchase record, one receipt. If any single tax-free item on that receipt is not physically with you, none of the goods on it can be confirmed and none of them are refunded. This rule did not exist under the old system, and the official traveller leaflet gives it a full panel with a worked example of a voided receipt. The scenario it punishes hardest is a big mixed outlet or department-store receipt: one gift handed over in Japan, one snack eaten, one jacket already in the hold, and the 10% on the whole receipt is gone. The fix is dull but effective — split your transactions.

Q4：Can I use tax-free goods while I am still in Japan?

For most things, yes — which is the opposite of what the old sealed-bag regime trains you to expect. Japan states explicitly that non-consumable goods used inside Japan can still pass the export confirmation, as long as they ultimately leave the country. Wear the coat, use the camera. Two things genuinely break the claim: consumables that are actually consumed (food, drink, cosmetics, medicines) — that receipt is dead, and in this case you must skip the kiosk and declare the consumption at a customs counter in person; and throwing away packaging, especially anything carrying the model number, because customs may then be unable to identify the item and will decline to confirm it. Keep goods in the condition you bought them.

Q5：How long does the refund take, and is there a handling fee?

There is no official figure for processing time. On fees, Japan has answered "who pays" but not "how much". Consumption tax law lays down no rules at all on refund method; officials merely list examples (bank transfer, card refund, app transfer, cash at the departure airport) and then repeat the same sentence in three separate places: refund methods differ by shop, please ask the tax-free store. On fees, the Japan Tourism Agency addresses it directly: contracting the refund to an operator generates a handling fee, and whether the traveller or the shop bears it is "not specified" — with a bracketed note that other countries generally charge the traveller. It also states that the government levies no handling fee. Rates and caps are outside the rules, so no nationwide number exists — the only moment you can find out is when you register your refund method at the till. Be aware too that Japan permits refunds in coupons or points usable only at specific facilities, so what comes back is not guaranteed to be cash.

Q6：I hold a Japanese passport. Am I automatically excluded?

No. This is a factual error that has been repeated for years, including in earlier versions here, and it was wrong under the old system too. Eligibility hinges on non-resident status under the Foreign Exchange Act, not on nationality — and the definition was not changed by this reform. A Japanese national qualifies if they have had a residence outside Japan continuously for two years or more and this visit home is under six months long. You show your passport plus one of three documents: a certificate of residence issued abroad, a copy of the family register attachment, or a My Number card. Two hard blocks: any Japanese resident registration within those two years disqualifies you outright, and clearing immigration via an automated gate leaves no returning-entry stamp, which also blocks the claim (you can ask an officer to stamp it).

Q7：I arrive in late October and fly home in November. Which system applies?

It is decided by the date you buy — the date the goods are handed over — and explicitly not by your departure date. Japan states this in writing, and there is no transitional period whatsoever: the switch happens at 00:00 on 1 November 2026. The one technical exception is that a shop using its existing accounting cut-off may book a 00:00–01:00 sale on 1 November as a 31 October sale, which then follows the old rules. Practically, a trip straddling that date produces two kinds of receipts. Anything bought on or before 31 October was already exempted at the till and needs no airport step at all; anything bought from 1 November does.

Q8：Did the ¥5,000 minimum change, and can I still post purchases home?

The minimum did not change: ¥5,000（同店同日最低消費（稅拔）） pre-tax, same shop, same day. Japan's own old-versus-new comparison table marks this row "no change", and the threshold is still assessed on the pre-tax figure even though you now hand over the tax-inclusive amount. What genuinely loosened: the general-goods/consumables split is gone (so both count toward one total), the ¥500,000 consumables cap is gone, and the export deadline widens from 30 days for consumables to 90 days for everything. Posting things home yourself, however, is finished — the separate-shipment rule was abolished on 31 March 2025. Goods bought from 1 April 2025 onward that are not physically with you at departure are taxed. Direct shipping arranged by the shop still exists under a different provision, but whether a shop offers it is up to that shop. Where a shop does offer it, direct shipping is actually the easier route: it carries no ¥5,000（同店同日最低消費（稅拔）） threshold and no eligibility restriction (residents of Japan can use it too), and there is nothing to do at the airport.

Three things to leave with

One: the airport step is landside, pre-bag-drop, passport-read, and pays you nothing. Get any of those four wrong and the trip's refunds can evaporate. "Pre-bag-drop" is the unforgiving one — Japan says checked baggage cannot be retrieved, and there is no alternative route.

Two: customs verifies per receipt, and one missing item voids the lot. The countermeasure is not clever, just deliberate: split your transactions so that anything you might open, eat or give away sits on its own receipt.

Three: you cannot find out how the refund works before you fly. Method, processing time and fee rates are unregulated (Japan says only that the government charges nothing and that other countries usually bill the traveller), the only moment you can ask is at the till — which is also where your refund method is registered — and what comes back is not guaranteed to be cash. On the other side of the ledger, the ¥5,000 pre-tax minimum has not moved and the export window has widened from 30 days to 90, so travellers who simply take their purchases home untouched come out ahead.

⚠️ This page goes out of date unusually fast. The system is brand new, the official record has deliberate gaps, and retail practice is unsettled. We have scheduled re-verification for early October 2026 (when airport kiosk locations are expected) and within two weeks of the 1 November launch. If you run the process in person after that date, we would like to hear what it actually looked like.

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