Refund JapanThis page is written for English-speaking travellers going to Japan.
Refund calculator
Put in what you spend at one shop on one day, and this shows the most that can come back to you.
How the arithmetic works
Japanese price tags normally show the tax-included price. At the standard 10% rate the tax inside that price is one eleventh of it, because the tag is 110% of the price of the goods. Taking ten per cent off the tag is the common mistake and it overstates the refund.
| On the price tag | Price of the goods | Consumption tax | Qualifies? |
|---|---|---|---|
| ¥5,500 | ¥5,000 | ¥500 | Yes, exactly at the line |
| ¥10,000 | ¥9,091 | ¥909 | Yes |
| ¥55,000 | ¥50,000 | ¥5,000 | Yes |
| ¥110,000 | ¥100,000 | ¥10,000 | Yes |
The threshold is measured before tax
The minimum is ¥5,000 excluding tax, which is ¥5,500 on the tag. It applies to one shop on one day, and receipts from different shops cannot be added together to reach it.
What this calculator cannot tell you
It gives you the ceiling. The handling fee has not been published, so we cannot subtract it. Neither the payout timing nor your card issuer's exchange rate is something we can look up. Those are the gaps, and we would rather name them than paper over them.