Until 31 October 2026, a tax-free shop in Japan took the consumption tax off at the till. Since 1 November 2026 you pay the full price including tax, and the tax comes back to you after you have passed a customs check on your way out of the country. The official reason given for the change is that goods bought tax-free were being resold inside Japan without ever leaving it.

The step at the airport is new, and it is easy to get wrong in a way you cannot undo.

Do I have to do anything if I don’t want the refund?

No. The National Tax Agency says so directly: whether you take the customs export check is optional.

If you skip it, you simply do not get the refund — you have paid the same consumption tax a resident pays, and there is nothing to declare and nothing to show.

The obligation runs the other way round. Once you have been through the check, you are required to take those goods out of Japan without delay. If you don’t, the exempted tax is collected from you and penalties apply. The risk sits with claiming the refund and then leaving the goods behind, not with declining it.

Source: National Tax Agency, FAQ on the online export confirmation at departure, Q6; and the Q&A on the export goods sales place system (refund method), on the matters a shop must explain to a purchaser.

Where the check happens

The check is done at a tax-free procedure terminal in the international departure lobby, before baggage check-in. Two rules put it there, and they work together:

• When you present your passport, you must still have every tax-free item you bought with you.
• Because of that, you cannot do the procedure once your checked baggage has gone.

There is no recovery from this. If you hand your suitcase over at the airline counter and then remember the terminal, the refund is gone.

It is also worth being clear about what this step is not. It confirms to customs that the goods are leaving the country. No money is paid out here.

Source: National Tax Agency Q&A (refund method), Q32, notes 1 and 3.

Kiosk, or my own phone?

At seven airports — Narita, Haneda, Kansai, Chubu Centrair, New Chitose, Fukuoka and Naha — you can do the check on your own phone through Visit Japan Web instead of queueing at a kiosk. Anywhere else, you use the terminal.

Two conditions apply to the phone route. You have to be registered on Visit Japan Web before you take the check, and you have to be inside the area covered by the dedicated customs Wi-Fi in the international departure lobby. That coverage reaches as far as the security checkpoint and no further, so this is a before-security option only.

• SSID: Customs_WiFi_For_TaxRefund
• Password: jcustoms

The exact coverage area and SSID for each airport are published on the Japan Customs website, and the phone route does one thing a kiosk cannot: it shows you your own purchase records and which of them qualify for a refund once the check clears.

Sources: National Tax Agency Q&A (refund method), Q33; National Tax Agency FAQ on the online procedure, Q2-1 to Q2-4; Japan Customs, “Online procedure for the export of tax-free goods via Visit Japan Web”.

What the result means

The two routes word the result differently, but they mean the same thing.

Route	You are done	You need to see customs
Kiosk	Green	Red
Phone, via Visit Japan Web	Completed	Not Completed

If you are done, go and check your bag as normal. If not, go to the customs inspection point and show the goods if staff ask. You may also be asked to show your receipts.

The part that catches people out: the whole check, including an inspection if you get one, has to be finished before you complete boarding procedures. If you break off an inspection partway because you are about to miss your flight, you have not received the check, and the refund is gone even though you started.

Sources: National Tax Agency FAQ on the online procedure, Q6; National Tax Agency Q&A (refund method), Q32, notes 2 and 5.

How long does it take?

Officially, reading the passport and returning a result takes a few seconds.

What travellers reported in the first week of the new system, between 1 and 6 November 2026:

Airport	Reported
Kansai, 1 Nov, around midday	No queue at either machine
Haneda, 1 Nov	Through at once, straight to baggage drop
Haneda, around 6 Nov	Under two minutes at both steps, no wait, staff on hand to help
Narita Terminal 3, 1 Nov	Described as glitchy; information desk staff not yet familiar with the new process; kiosks tucked beside a lift; queues. The refund step itself about five minutes

So the scan is not what you need to budget for. What is worth budgeting for is the tail case: a Red result on a tight connection, where the rule above means an abandoned inspection counts as no check at all.

Sources: National Tax Agency Q&A (refund method), Q32 note 3, for the official timing. The table is first-hand traveller reports posted to r/JapanTravelTips, collected 10 November 2026 — individual accounts from the first week, not a measurement.

The four mistakes that cost you the whole refund

1. Checking your bag first. You must still have every item when you present your passport, and the terminal is closed to you once your baggage has gone.
2. Using the terminal after eating or using up part of a consumable. If you no longer hold all or part of the goods because you have consumed them, you must not use the terminal. You are required to go to a customs officer at the counter and say so. Which purchases count as consumables is a separate question — see what you can use in Japan.
3. Breaking off an inspection to catch your flight. It counts as no check at all.
4. Never doing the procedure at the shop. The airport step only confirms a purchase that was already registered against your passport at the till. If you did not ask for tax-free treatment when you paid, there is nothing at the airport to confirm.

Source: National Tax Agency Q&A (refund method), Q32, notes 1, 2 and 6.

If your purchases don’t show up on screen

This is the most common thing to go wrong, and the official FAQ is specific about it.

“No purchase record found.” Three things cause it. A record you have already processed moves to History rather than the main list. A record you have not processed yet is only shown for 90 days from purchase. Or the shop has not sent the record at all — refresh the screen, and if it still isn’t there, contact the shop.

A record is missing or wrong. The data comes from the shop, so the shop is who fixes it. If a purchase is recent, it may simply not have arrived yet.

You didn’t show your Visit Japan Web QR code at the till. Purchases from those shops still appear. Showing the code is not what puts them on the list.

“Your Wi-Fi connection was lost.” The dedicated Wi-Fi dropped before you pressed Confirm. Reconnect and press it again; if it keeps happening, use a kiosk instead. One traveller leaving Haneda in the first week reported having to turn a VPN off before the customs Wi-Fi would work — a single report, not an official instruction, but it costs nothing to check.

“Your passport information could not be verified.” Usually the session has timed out. Log in to Visit Japan Web again, or use a kiosk.

Source: National Tax Agency FAQ on the online procedure, Q3-3 to Q3-5 and Q7-1 to Q7-6.

If you chose a cash refund

Some airports have a second machine that pays the refund out in cash. It is a separate, optional service run by private companies rather than by customs — and if your refund is going to a card or a bank account, you do not need it at all. Confusing the required customs check with this optional cash machine is the most repeated misunderstanding in traveller discussions.

The refund method is set by the shop you bought from, not by you at the airport, so it is worth asking at the till which methods that shop supports.

One operator, GLORY, launched machines at three airports on 1 November 2026 and says it aims to reach other airports by the end of March 2028. Its current locations:

Airport	Where	Hours
Haneda Terminal 2, international area	3F departure concourse, after immigration	06:45–25:30
Haneda Terminal 3	3F departure concourse, after immigration	24 hours
Narita Terminal 1	4F Central Building, before security	06:00–24:00
Narita Terminal 2	3F Main Building, before security	06:00–24:00
Naha	2F departure concourse, after immigration	06:00–21:00

Those positions are worth noting because they contradict a common assumption. At Narita the machines sit before the security check; at Haneda and Naha they are after immigration. “After security” is not a general rule, and other operators at other airports will differ.

Source: Japan Airport Terminal Co., Ltd. and GLORY LTD., joint press release, 21 October 2026, and GLORY’s Self Tax Refund service page, read 10 November 2026. Locations and hours are set by the operator and can change.

Japan’s departure tax is a separate charge that applies when you leave the country, whether or not you shopped tax-free. See Japan’s departure tax.