Two tax rates sit side by side in every shopping basket in Japan, and which one applied to each item decides exactly how much comes back to you.

How to tell which rate applies

  1. Expect 10% by default. Japan’s standard consumption tax rate applies to almost anything that isn’t food — electronics, clothes, bags, cosmetics, souvenirs, all of it.
  2. Expect 8% on packaged food and drink you’re taking away. Snacks, sweets, tea, and soft drinks bought to eat or drink later carry the reduced rate.
  3. Watch three traps that don’t follow the “food” rule. Alcoholic drinks (beer, sake, whisky) are taxed at 10% even though they sit next to the snacks. Medicine and quasi-drugs from a drugstore are taxed at 10% too — they aren’t classified as food. And restaurant meals or anything you eat on the spot are taxed at 10% as a service, not refundable goods to begin with.
  4. Look for the 8% subtotal line on the receipt. Japanese receipts commonly mark reduced-rate items, often with a ※ symbol or a separate 8% subtotal, so check there rather than guessing.
  5. Don’t worry about the threshold math. The ¥5,000 minimum is counted on the before-tax total per store per day, and that works the same way whether the items in your basket are taxed at 8% or 10%.

For what the refund adds up to and when it lands, see how much comes back, and when.

Why your refund is really two calculations

The refund isn’t a flat percentage off your receipt — it equals the consumption tax actually charged on each item. A basket mixing packaged snacks (8%) with electronics (10%) refunds at two different rates, not one.

Say you buy ¥10,000 of electronics taxed at 10% and ¥10,000 of packaged food taxed at 8%. The electronics carry ¥1,000 of tax; the food carries ¥800. Your total refund is the sum of both — ¥1,800 — not ¥10,000 run through a single percentage.

Food and drink come with their own catch on top of the rate question: eat any of it before you fly, and customs can’t confirm it’s leaving the country, so that item loses its refund regardless of which rate applied. See the consumables rule for what counts as consumed and how to avoid it.

If a purchase doesn’t fit cleanly into either bucket, the official pages below spell out exactly what counts as reduced-rate food.