TOKYO: Japan’s planned introduction of a “departure tax” on international travelers has received a mixed response, with many questions yet to be answered about how the revenues will be spent.
Hopes are high that the recent tourism boom will continue beyond the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, when the government aims to attract 40 million visitors to the country that year. Currently, at least 5,000 yen needs to be spent on general goods such as home appliances or on disposable items such as cosmetics and medicine to qualify for the tax exemption.
But the plan is to enable foreign shoppers to combine them to reach the 5,000 yen threshold. Japan has seen a surge in foreign visitors in recent years, with the number already hitting a new record in 2017, exceeding the previous high of over 24 million last year.
In 2016, the number of departures from Japan stood at around 40 million, meaning that had the departure tax already been in place it would have generated revenues of some 40 billion yen.
