# Tabitecho: Receipt to Refund — Shops, customs, and the refund > Shops, customs, and the refund (iPhone/iPad app by GYOU GI.) - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/tabitecho-receipt-to-refund/id6824190450 (this page in markdown: same URL + `.md`) - Developer: [GYOU GI](https://appshunter.io/developer/6776104453) - Category: Travel, Shopping - Price: Free with in-app purchases - Age rating: 4+ - Requires: iOS 18.0 · 4 MB - Languages: American English, Japanese, Chinese (Simplified, China), Chinese (Traditional, Taiwan) - Released: 2026-10-20 - Data updated: 2026-11-01 ## What is Tabitecho? On 1 November 2026 Japan changed how tax-free works. You pay the full, tax-included price in the shop and get the tax back when you leave the country. The part that bites is that the refund is judged one receipt at a time, as a whole. If even one item on a receipt cannot be shown at customs, nothing on that receipt is refunded. Fifty thousand yen on one slip, one item left at the hotel, and the whole fifty thousand is gone. Tabitecho finds it while you can still act, instead of at the airport. And it is not only a refund ledger. Tax-free shops, by area Osaka, Tokyo, Kyoto, Fukuoka, Sapporo and more. Department stores, electronics, drugstores. Filter by area and open the map. Shops the editor has been to carry a personal ranking and a note; the rest carry facts only. Can you take it home? Meat, dairy, fresh produce, medicine, liquids and lithium batteries, by destination country, in three levels. Finding out at the border is the expensive way. Voltage and plug shape too, so you know before you buy whether it will work at home. The check before you leave Japan You tick items off receipt by receipt. A receipt that is still short goes to the top of the list, with the number of items missing and what it means: this whole receipt will not be refunded. If you linked a photo to the receipt, the check shows it, so you tick by looking instead of trying to remember. The money arrives after you have gone The unsettling part is that the refund lands after you are home. Each receipt moves through three stages: registered, confirmed at the airport, came back. What actually came back is recorded separately from the estimate, so you can see afterwards how much was taken in fees. Customs has 90 days Counted from the day after you bought it. Receipts nearing the deadline come first. Dates are counted in Japan time. Free, and staying free - The rest of the toolbox: size charts, currency conversion, when shops close, phrases you cannot say, and how tax-free works now - What I bought on this trip. Photos are kept inside the app only - A shopping list and a budget. What you spent comes from your receipts, so no amount is typed twice - A share card. Turn your photos into one card, exported at Xiaohongshu, Instagram, Story and X sizes Left out on purpose - Price comparison. Prices go stale fast, and a tool showing an old price is worse than no tool - Booking or paying for you. Standing between you and the shop means promising what we cannot - A guaranteed refund figure. What you see is worked back from the tax-included price Photos and privacy Photos you take are kept inside the app only. They do not go into your photo library and they are never uploaded. There is no account, no location is used, and the app carries no advertising and no analytics. With the one-time purchase, Settings can put the receipt ledger alone into your own iCloud. Photos stay on the device that took them. What it costs The shop list, the toolbox, your photos, the shopping list and the share card are free and stay free. On the tax-free side the first 3 receipts are free; past that it takes one payment, once. It is not a subscription. The price is on the App Store page. Things worth knowing first - Reading a receipt is a first pass. The total is the one line to check against the paper - The refund figure is an estimate, and the officer at the border decides. This is not tax advice - The carry-home guidance gives three levels, no amounts, and links to official customs pages - Shop rankings are one editor's personal opinion. No shop has paid or given anything in return - Photos do not sync. They will not follow you to a new phone, so export anything you want to keep from Settings - iPhone and iPad Japanese, English, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese, switchable inside the app. Terms of Use: https://tabitecho.glspace.co.jp/terms.html#en Privacy Policy: https://tabitecho.glspace.co.jp/privacy.html#en ## Pricing and in-app purchases Base price: Free. **One-time purchases** | Purchase | Price | Type | | --- | --- | --- | | Tax-free, unlocked | $12.99 | one-time | ## Is Tabitecho safe? Not enough ratings yet to assess Tabitecho. ## Is Tabitecho legit? Tabitecho: Receipt to Refund appears legitimate, with a few gaps. The AppsHunter Legitimacy Score for Tabitecho is 65 out of 100 points across 7 verification signals from App Store and developer data. ## Version history (last 5 releases) ### 1.7 — 2026-10-31 The toolbox now covers the time between buying and leaving: who can buy tax-free at all, paying by card, posting and checking in, how a restaurant works here, what is a rule and what is not, and capsules and net cafes. Public holidays are listed through 2027. Discover has an Eat side as well, with the markets and lanes of each area. ### 1.6 — 2026-10-29 Settings now has a row called "Where to find us". It opens a single page listing the accounts we post from. ### 1.5 — 2026-10-28 Bug fixes and small improvements. ### 1.3 — 2026-10-26 You can now follow a refund until it actually arrives. Under the new system you pay the full price in the shop and the tax comes back after you leave Japan. Once customs has checked your things at the airport, your part is over and all that is left is waiting. Remembering that was entirely up to you. After you confirm at the airport, Tabitecho counts what has not come back yet and sends up to three reminders. It gives you the number of receipts and roughly how much, and nothing more. When the money lands is for the shop and its refund operator to decide, so we do not guess at it. Anything you took as cash on the spot is already settled and is not counted. You can write down how each refund is being paid: cash in the departure area, back to the card, bank transfer, or through an app. The shop decides which one. If you forgot to ask, you can leave it as not asked. The last reminder adds where to look for that particular method. Once everything has come back, the trip shows the gap between what you paid out and what you got back, in one line. Fees are taken out, so a little less than the estimate is normal. It is there to help you judge the next trip, not to worry you. Your receipts can now be saved as a spreadsheet: the date, the shop, the amount including tax, how far it got, and how the refund was paid. Three more rules on the rules page. Gold and platinum bullion, gold and platinum coins, and goods that are not taxed to begin with cannot be tax-free. For a single item of 1,000,000 yen or more before tax, the shop sends its details, so the paperwork takes longer. And only what you can carry out yourself can be tax-free. ### 1.2 — 2026-10-24 The tax-free minimum now shows up on your receipts. One shop, one day, 5,000 yen or more before tax. If a group falls short, the card tells you roughly how much is missing. It counts the whole day at that shop, not each receipt on its own, so if you bought twice and the total clears the line, nothing is shown. The rules page now opens with this minimum. It does not change under the new system. There is a new line about what actually happens at the airport. You scan your passport at a kiosk, green means you are done, red means you go to the inspection desk. And before you check your bags: once they are checked you cannot do this, and you cannot get them back. Tabitecho now runs on iPad, in any orientation. When several notices had piled up, they now all appear at once. Before, they came one at a time, so the red dot could stay on after you had read one. When a backup is saved, you are now told right away if any photo could not be read. ## More apps by GYOU GI - [Mojiokoshi: Voice to Text](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/mojiokoshi-voice-to-text/id6778388699) - [Omamori Anti-Loss](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/omamori-anti-loss/id6780411162) - [Atelier Photo Editor](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/atelier-photo-editor/id6784233483) - [PlusCoin - Side Income](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/pluscoin-side-income/id6788990507) - [Kotonemu](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/kotonemu/id6800693416) - [Koyomi Japan Market Calendar](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/koyomi-japan-market-calendar/id6803915492) All apps by GYOU GI: https://appshunter.io/developer/6776104453 ## Related topics [refund receipt](https://appshunter.io/ios/topics/refund-receipt) --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-11-01.*