The Taxes on Purchases in Japan

Usually the taxes on purchases are already included in shop prices, so you can pay the taxes automatically. These taxes are tobacco taxes and alcohol taxes, which are for specific item, and consumption tax that is for every item. In these taxes case, you can pay automatically, so you don't need to worry to forget to pay the taxes.

In this connection, the tobacco taxes are about 60 percents. And the alcohol taxes depend on the kinds of alcohol, so I drew the below table to describe the details.

Class	Alcoholic drinks	Alcoholic strength	Tax charge each one liter	Additional charge each 1 percent
Beers	Beer (Basic tax ratio)	Less than 20%	220
	Low-malt beer (malt ratio 25-50%)	Less than 10%	178
	Low-malt beer (malt ratio less than 25%)	Less than 10%	134
	Other kinds of beers made by hop	Less than 10%	80
Alcoholic beverage made by fermentation	Sake	Less than 22%	120
	Fruit liqueur and wine	－	80
	The others (Basic tax ratio)	Less than 20%	140
Spirits	Shochu	20%	200	10
	Whisky, Brandy, Spirit	37%	370	10
Mixed liquor	Liqueur, Fruit wine	12%	120	10
	Mixed Sake	－	100	－
	Sweet cooking Sake	－	20	－
	Powder liquor	－	390	－
	Other alcohol (Basic tax ratio)	20%	220	11

Since I visited Canada, I found out Japanese prices of beer and wine are very expensive. Maybe, beer's price is double, wine's one is from double to three times. So, if you love beers and wines, I recommend you to drink a lot of glasses in you country before coming to Japan.

For reference, Canadian beer's price was 150 yen and I could buy several kinds of wines with around 1,000 yen in Canada.

And, Japanese consumption tax on every purchase is 5%, and the rate will increase forward.

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