How to Set Japan's 8% Reduced Tax Rate on Shopify
How do you charge 8% on food in Shopify?
To charge Japan’s reduced 8% rate (軽減税率) on food in Shopify, put the food products in a manual collection and add a product override of 8% for that collection under Settings → Taxes and duties → Japan. Other products keep Shopify’s rate for Japan, normally the standard 10%. Check a test order before relying on it.
Note: The Shopify settings and labels on this page were checked against Shopify’s help documentation, and the tax rules against the National Tax Agency (国税庁) and the laws on e-Gov, on 14 October 2026.
The rate counts in two places: the tax you charge at checkout is Shopify’s, and every invoice or receipt you give afterwards can only repeat the rates Shopify charged. A food shop with no override charges the standard rate on everything, and its receipts say so.
Which products take the reduced rate?
Japan’s reduced 8% rate applies to food and drink for people to eat or drink, other than alcoholic drinks, eating in at a restaurant (外食) and catering, and to newspapers published at least twice a week and sold by subscription. Food sold online counts like food sold in a shop (NTA: the reduced rate; Consumption Tax Act, Appendix 1; NTA Q&A, cases, section I, question 34).
The cases an online shop meets most often, from the National Tax Agency’s Q&A on individual cases:
| What you sell | Rate | NTA Q&A |
|---|---|---|
| Food and non-alcoholic drinks, including health foods that aren’t medicines | 8% | Questions 1, 24 |
| Alcoholic drinks under the Liquor Tax Act (酒類), including hon-mirin | 10% | Questions 12, 14 |
| Medicines and quasi-drugs (医薬品・医薬部外品), such as some energy drinks | 10% | Question 23 |
| Pet food | 10% | Question 4 |
| Food in its ordinary packaging, such as a box, tin or bag | 8%, packaging included | Questions 25, 26 |
| Gift wrapping or a container with its own price | 10% | Question 25 |
| Shipping charged as a separate fee | 10% | Question 39 |
| Food sold “shipping included” (送料込み), with no separate fee | 8% | Question 39 |
| A catalogue gift (カタログギフト), even of food only | 10% | Question 35 |
Source: NTA Q&A, cases, section I (revised April 2026; checked 14 October 2026).
A set of food and non-food sold for one price, such as tea with a cup, is a combined item (一体資産). The whole set takes 8% only if its price is 10,000 yen or less before tax and the food makes up at least two-thirds of its value, by selling price or cost; otherwise the whole set takes 10% (NTA Q&A, cases, section IV, questions 84, 87 and 91 to 95). If the customer picks the items in a set, it isn’t a combined item: each part takes its own rate. For a product these cases don’t settle, ask your tax accountant (税理士).
Is Japan’s food rate changing in 2027?
Possibly. A Cabinet outline of 15 September 2026 proposes cutting the consumption tax on food to 1% from 1 April 2027 to 31 March 2029. The Cabinet sent the bill to the Diet on 9 October 2026, and the House of Representatives lists it as under deliberation (checked 14 October 2026) (Cabinet Secretariat; House of Representatives: the bill’s progress). The National Tax Agency says its explanations apply only if the bill passes (NTA: rate cut).
What the proposal says, as the NTA explains it in its Q&A (NTA Q&A on the rate cut, September 2026):
- Scope. The 1% rate would cover the same food that takes 8% today. Subscribed newspapers stay at 8%, everything else at 10%.
- Mail order. An online sale keeps 8% after 1 April 2027 if its terms were shown before 1 January 2027 and the order arrived before 1 April 2027, unless the terms already allowed for 1%. Prepaid subscriptions of food agreed before 1 January 2027 get a similar rule.
- Invoices. A qualified invoice would show 1% as the rate and the tax at 1%. Marking reduced-rate items as you do today would be enough; no new mark is needed.
Until the bill passes, keep your 8% override as it is. If it passes, the 8% override is the number to change on the day, and the invoices and receipts your shop gives must show 1% on those lines.
How do you set the 8% override?
You set it in two parts: a manual collection that holds the food products, then an override on that collection for Japan. Shopify applies tax overrides only to products added to a collection by hand, never to products added by conditions, by another collection or by an app (Shopify: tax overrides).
Make a collection of your food products
- From your Shopify admin, go to Products → Collections.
- Click Add collection, and give it a title such as “Reduced rate 8%”.
- In the Products source, click Add products, select every food product, and click Add.
- Optional: hide the collection from your sales channels, so customers never see it.
- Click Save.
Add the override for Japan
- Go to Settings → Taxes and duties, and click Japan.
- In the Tax rates and exemptions section, under Product overrides, click Add override.
- Select the collection, and select the region if Shopify asks for one.
- In the Tax rate field, enter 8. Shopify warns that this is the rate to collect, not the amount exempted.
- Click Add override.
Three things to know once it’s in place. A customer you’ve set as tax-exempt pays no tax, whatever the override says. Overrides apply to online sales and Shopify POS sales alike. And a food product you add to the store later is charged 10% until you add it to the collection, so make that part of adding a product.
Should prices include tax?
Yes, for sales to consumers. Shopify’s help says merchants in Japan must use tax-inclusive prices, and Japan’s Consumption Tax Act requires prices shown to the general public to include tax.
In Shopify, the setting is Include sales tax in product price and shipping rate under Settings → Taxes and duties (Shopify: taxes in Japan). In the law, Article 63 requires a taxable business that shows prices to the general public in advance to show them with the tax included (総額表示) (Consumption Tax Act on e-Gov). A shop that sells only to other businesses is outside that rule.
With tax-inclusive prices, the override changes the tax inside the price, not the price the customer pays. Shopify works out the tax portion as rate × price ÷ (1 + rate) (Shopify: including tax in prices). On a 1,080 yen box of sweets, that’s 80 yen of tax at 8%, against about 98 yen at 10%.
How do you check an order shows both rates?
Check with a test order that holds one food product and one other product, then read the taxes on the order. Shopify’s test payment gateway, or Shopify Payments’ test mode, lets you place an order without being charged (Shopify: test orders).
- Turn on test mode for your payment provider. While it’s on, customers can’t place real orders, so do this outside busy hours.
- Place an order with one product from your 8% collection, one product outside it, and a shipping charge.
- Open the order in Orders and check the taxes: 8% on the food line, 10% on the other line and on the shipping fee.
- Check the order confirmation and any invoice or receipt you send show the same split.
- Turn test mode off.
If the food line shows 10%, the product isn’t in the collection, the collection was built by conditions, or the override is on a different country. If shipping shows 8%, look under Shipping overrides in the same Tax rates and exemptions section.
How do receipts show the two rates?
A receipt or invoice shows the two rates by marking the 8% items, for example with ※ and a note, and by giving the total and the tax for 8% and for 10% separately. Both come from the rates Shopify charged on the order.
With Shopify Order Printer, Shopify’s free app, the template is yours. Its Liquid gives each order’s and each line’s tax lines, with the rate and the amount (Liquid reference), so you can print a ※ on 8% lines and add up the totals per rate yourself.
With Ori, which we build, the rates come from the same tax lines. On Japanese designs, Ori marks a line ※ when its rate is exactly 8% and prints the note 「※印は軽減税率（8%）対象品目です。」. It totals the tax once per rate on each document. It doesn’t read your Shopify tax settings, so a food product left at 10% in Shopify prints at 10% on Ori’s receipt too. The detail is in how Ori prints 8% and 10%.
Tip: Ori, which prints Japan’s qualified-invoice items on every order’s documents, marks 8% lines and gives the totals for each rate on invoices and receipts, from the rates Shopify charged.
What else an invoice must show, and how its tax must be rounded, is in the qualified invoice on Shopify. For receipts addressed to a customer’s company, see receipts for customers in Japan.
Frequently asked questions
Can one product carry two rates?
No: one product sold for one price takes one rate. A set of food and non-food sold as one product is a combined item, taxed at 8% only within the 10,000 yen and two-thirds limits above. If the parts need different rates, sell them as separate products, or let the customer choose the parts so each takes its own rate (NTA Q&A, cases, section IV).
Is shipping taxed at 8%?
No. A shipping fee charged separately pays for delivery, not for food, so it takes the standard 10% even when the parcel holds only food. Food sold with shipping built into the price, with no separate fee, takes 8% on the whole price (NTA Q&A, cases, section I, question 39).
Does Shopify set 8% for me?
Not for Japan, from what Shopify’s help describes. Shopify’s tax calculation by product category is for sales in the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom (Shopify: product categories), and its Japan tax page says you might need to set rates manually (Shopify: taxes in Japan). For food in Japan, the 8% comes from the override you add.
