Frequent travelers to Japan, get ready for a significant change to the way you shop in 2026. Japan’s government has firmed up a new – and somewhat involved – system designed to stop unscrupulous resellers from avoiding the country’s consumption tax.
The government has finished laying out the broad principles of its new tax reform bill. As part of the bill, Japan will cease supporting duty-free shopping at point of sale. Instead, customers will need to keep their receipts and request a refund at the airport.
Under the new system, inbound visitors will pay Japan’s consumption tax – currently at 10% for most goods – when they buy a product. The store will record the purchase in a centralized database shared with Japan’s Customs agency.
Purchasers will then have 90 days (i.e., the length of a visa-free entry to Japan) to present their purchases to Customs at the airport for a refund. Customs systems and agents will verify the tax refund. The store will then verify and record the sales tax deduction on its side.
In addition to refunding at departure, the law will eliminate the 500,000 yen cap (USD $3,167) on duty-free purchases. It’ll abolish existing rules that consumable goods – makeup, food, medicine, etc. – must have special packaging so that Customs agents can determine that the items have remained unopened, eliminating distinctions between regular goods and goods marketed for duty-free shopping.
As we originally reported in May, the law is designed to crack down on illegal reselling. There have been multiple large-scale cases of foreign visitors or residents making tax-free purchases and then reselling the goods they purchased in-country.
Besides cracking down on fraud, the new law aims to make life easier for retailers, who will no longer have to decide whether a given purchase qualifies for a tax rebate. It also seems designed to make lives easier for Customs officials and pave the way for automating refund requests, much like how inbound Customs clearance is now an automated, kiosk-driven process.
The new law will take effect in November 2026.
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