--- title: "Japan Tax-Free 2026: Do Free Samples Count Toward the ¥5,000 Minimum?" description: "A cosmetics purchase is counted at ¥5,000 before tax per buyer, per shop, per day, and that total is built from what was paid. Sachets and novelties handed over at no charge carry no price." lang: en canonical: https://refund-japan.com/articles/cosmetics-samples-and-gifts published: 2026-09-18 updated: 2026-09-18 publisher: "Refund Japan" --- # Japan Tax-Free 2026: Do Free Samples Count Toward the ¥5,000 Minimum? > A cosmetics purchase is counted at ¥5,000 before tax per buyer, per shop, per day, and that total is built from what was paid. Sachets and novelties handed over at no charge carry no price. Last checked: 2026-09-18 The figure a cosmetics purchase is measured against is ¥5,000 before tax at one shop on one day, and that figure is assembled from the amounts printed beside the goods on the receipt — [Japan Tourism Agency](https://www.mlit.go.jp/kankocho/tax-free/page01_000001_00019.html) (checked August 19, 2026). A sachet, a pouch or a printed tote handed across the counter at no charge arrives without an amount beside it, so a basket that has not reached ¥5,000 before tax stays where it is however many of them go into the bag. ## Do free samples count toward the ¥5,000 minimum? No. What the threshold reads is money that changed hands for goods, and an item given at no charge never had a figure attached to it in the first place. The rule runs in one direction only, and it is the direction shoppers get backwards: a giveaway cannot close a gap, while anything able to close a gap is something bought. The practical form of all this is the amounts column on your receipt — what carries a figure builds the sum, what carries none sits outside it. ## Which lines on the receipt build the total? - **Lines with a figure beside them.** Those before-tax figures are added together, and a line printed without one adds nothing at all. - **A tag reading ¥5,500 carries ¥5,000 before tax.** Japanese shelf tags usually show the tax-included price, so a paid item is read through the smaller figure in the breakdown, not the one on the tag. - **The passport goes to the register with the items being paid for**, and the record is made against the traveller who presents it, whatever else happens to end up in the bag. - **From November 1, 2026 the amount you hand over at the counter includes the tax**, which makes the before-tax breakdown the part of the slip worth reading. None of those steps puts a figure on something that arrived without one. The wider shape of a cosmetics purchase is laid out on [the whole route of a cosmetics purchase](https://refund-japan.com/articles/cosmetics). ## What changes for freebies on November 1, 2026? - **The tax is handed over at the register and comes back after the customs confirmation**, so the slip you keep is a tax-included one and the qualifying figures sit inside its breakdown. - **The general goods and consumables split ends**, so a lipstick, a lotion and a tote bought at one shop on one day form a single before-tax sum for one buyer. - **The former daily ceiling on consumables is abolished.** What that removes is a cap on how far a single day of shopping can be counted. What it leaves entirely alone is whether a thing carried a figure at all. ## What stays the same when a gift is added? - **¥5,000 before tax, per buyer, per shop, per day.** The grouping does not widen because a giveaway crossed the counter. - **The figure is the amount paid**, which is also why a slip from a second shop cannot be folded in to cover a shortfall. - **The goods you paid for leave Japan with you within 90 days of the purchase date**, and a terminal reads the passport when you depart — [Japan Customs](https://www.customs.go.jp/) (checked August 19, 2026). ## When does a free item show up in a cosmetics purchase? ### A handful of sachets goes into the bag at the register The packets are dropped in after the scanning is finished, so they never passed the barcode reader and never picked up a figure. The slip that prints is identical to the one you would have held if you had politely declined them. ### The basket is short and the counter offers more freebies Accepting them leaves the shortfall exactly where it was, because a shortfall is measured in money and a giveaway is not money. The only move that changes the answer is putting one more paid item on the counter. ### A gift that arrives once you buy a set number of items Counting items and counting money are two different exercises, and only the second one is what the tax-free desk performs. A basket can trigger the gift and still fall short of the line, or clear the line without triggering the gift at all. ### A gift that arrives once you spend a set amount The campaign figure belongs to the shop, and shops are free to write it as a tax-included amount, so it will not always sit at the same place as the before-tax figure used for tax-free. Ask at the counter which of the two the poster means. ### A tester you used at the counter before buying Whatever was used from a tester belonged to the shop and never appeared on your slip. The item you carried to the register is the one holding a figure, and that figure does not move with how much you tried first. ### A sealed lucky bag whose contents you cannot see One price is printed for the bag as a whole, and that single figure is what the receipt carries, whatever turns out to be inside it. You do not have to open it to know what was counted. ### The second item is half price Here the money itself moves, which is exactly the difference between a discount and an object handed over at no charge. The slip records the reduced amount, and the reduced amount is what gets added up. ### One item is free when you buy one However many bottles leave the shop in your bag, the amount paid covers a single one. If the second line is printed at all, nothing is added to the sum by it. ### The novelty is printed on the receipt with no amount beside it A line with an empty amount field is harmless and equally useless for reaching the threshold. Running a finger down the amounts column is the quickest way to see what your sum is actually made of. ### A boxed set with a miniature inside The box went over the scanner as one article with one price, and the miniature inside it was never a separate transaction. Packaged sets are followed through in [how a boxed set is counted](https://refund-japan.com/articles/skincare-sets). ### The gift is handed over at a different counter of the same shop Walking to another floor does not create a second shop or a second day, so the grouping of your paid items is untouched. How that particular shop writes a giveaway into its own records is a question for its staff, and asking costs nothing. ### The extra came out of a points balance rather than a price What the register books as paid for goods is what the threshold reads, and point redemptions are handled differently from shop to shop. The staff at the tax-free desk can tell you which figure their system recorded. ### You want to know what comes back from what you paid Cosmetics carry 10% consumption tax, so a tax-included figure holds one eleventh of itself as tax: ¥909 inside a ¥10,000 tag. The steps are set out in [the arithmetic from a paid amount to a refund](https://refund-japan.com/articles/cosmetics-refund-arithmetic), and they begin with money, which is one more reason giveaways never enter them. ### You open a free sample during the trip From November 1, 2026 the sealed bag is gone, so opening something before departure stops being a problem for the things you bought as well. What that looks like in practice is followed in [what opening a purchase before departure does](https://refund-japan.com/articles/opening-the-package-before-departure). ### The sample is finished before the flight A sample that no longer exists cannot be put on a counter, and neither can a purchase that went the same way. That case is followed in [what happens when nothing is left to show](https://refund-japan.com/articles/used-it-all-up). ### You want to leave the freebie with a friend in Japan The item you paid for travels out of the country with you. How something received at no charge is treated is not set out in the published material as of August 19, 2026, so packing it with everything else keeps the question from arising, and the shop can say how it handles its own giveaways. ## What is not published about free items as of August 19, 2026? Two points about giveaways remain unpublished as of August 19, 2026, and neither of them changes what the sum is built from. - **The record.** How an item handed over at no charge is written into the tax-free purchase record is not published as of August 19, 2026. - **The departure.** Whether such an item is expected to leave Japan with the buyer is not published as of August 19, 2026. Fees, cash at the airport, terminal locations and the waiting time for a refund sit outside this question; those answers appear through [the Japan Tax-free Shop Association](https://zenmenkyo.jp/refund/) (checked August 19, 2026) and [the Japan Tourism Agency](https://www.mlit.go.jp/kankocho/tax-free/page01_000001_00019.html) (checked August 19, 2026). ## What else do shoppers ask about samples and gifts? ### Do free samples count toward the ¥5,000 minimum? No. The threshold reads the amount paid before tax, and a giveaway arrives without an amount. ### Can a bagful of sachets close a shortfall? No. Only a paid item moves the figure. ### Does a novelty printed without an amount change anything? No. A line with an empty amount field adds nothing to the sum. ### A gift for buying a set number of items — does the gift itself count? Items and money are counted separately, and the tax-free desk counts money only. ### Is a shop's spend-threshold campaign the same figure as the tax-free line? Not necessarily. Campaign figures are often written tax-included, so ask the counter which one the poster means. ### Is a discount treated like a free object? No. A discount moves the amount paid; an object handed over at no charge does not. ### Buy one, get one free — what is counted? The amount paid for the item you bought. ### A lucky bag — what enters the sum? The single price printed for the bag. ### What about a boxed set with a miniature inside? One article, one price, and that price is the figure. ### Does using a tester in the shop change my total? No. The tester was never on your slip. ### Does accepting samples put the purchase at risk? The figure used is the amount paid, and accepting something free does not alter it. ### Was the giveaway written into my tax-free record? How a shop records it is not published as of August 19, 2026, and the staff at the desk can say what their own system did. ### Do I have to carry the free samples out of Japan? The goods you paid for leave with you, and whether a free item is expected to is not published as of August 19, 2026. ### Can I open a free sample during the trip? From November 1, 2026 the sealed bag is gone, so things can be opened before departure. ### What if the sample was used up before the flight? Something that no longer exists cannot be put on a counter at departure. ### What comes back from a ¥10,000 cosmetics purchase? ¥909, one eleventh of the tax-included figure, and the most that can return. ## Sources - [Japan Tourism Agency](https://www.mlit.go.jp/kankocho/tax-free/page01_000001_00019.html) — checked August 19, 2026 - [Japan Customs](https://www.customs.go.jp/) — checked August 19, 2026 - [the Japan Tax-free Shop Association](https://zenmenkyo.jp/refund/) — checked August 19, 2026