Mali sorted her receipts into three colours, then stopped just before checking in her suitcase: a night of tax refunds

Mali’s eighth work trip to Seoul ended on the Friday of the first week of December. She is 23 and works for a beauty magazine in Bangkok, and this trip had come with an unusually long shopping list. There were creams and lip colours for herself, products for the winter-issue shoot, gifts for her older sister, and the skin-care device her mother had been mentioning for three months. On an evening cold enough for her thick coat, Mali turned her purse upside down on the bed in her room. Fourteen receipts spilled across the duvet.

Her flight left after midnight, so instead of packing first she took out her stack of colour cards. These were the cards she used to pick colours for shoots, and tonight she planned to lay one in front of each pile of receipts. Green meant the tax was already dealt with, orange meant something was left to do at the airport, and grey meant no money back. Colour piles read far faster for Mali than words ever did. As she sorted, though, the questions lined up: how much she had to spend, whether a shop or the airport was better, and what came first at the airport.

Tonight she would be flying from Terminal 2 at Incheon Airport. If she finished the receipts in the few hours left, she thought, all she would have to do at the airport was collect the money. The route a foreign traveller takes to get back the tax inside a price was, in fact, one step longer than her plan. Not knowing about that step, Mali opened the guide on her phone and picked up the receipt on top.

The Cue — At a glance

If you meet the visitor conditions, get your passport out whenever you spend 15,000 won or more, tax included, in one go at a participating shop. Under 1 million won, and with your immediate refund total since arrival staying within 5 million won, the immediate refund at the till is the easiest route. From 1 million to 6 million won, choose between downtown and the airport, and above 6 million won, go to the airport. At the airport, finish the kiosk and customs before you check in any bag holding refund items, and collect the money after immigration.

How much do you need to spend for a tax refund? 15,000 won or more in one go

Foreign visitors can get a tax refund when they spend 15,000 won or more in one go. The scheme returns the value-added tax and individual consumption tax inside the price, which makes it a different path from a duty-free shop, where you buy without the tax in the first place. Mali stopped at this line with her hand in the air. The figure in her old note was “from 30,000 won”. The minimum dropped from 30,000 won to 15,000 won on 1 January 2024, and notes and guides from before then still carry the old figure.

One receipt had gone grey because of that note. It was for an 18,000-won lip balm she had bought two evenings earlier. Believing it fell short of 30,000 won, she hadn’t even taken out her passport at the till. The price was over 15,000 won, but if you don’t get the refund paperwork when you buy, there is no way of getting the money back at the airport later. Mali laid the receipt on the grey card and put a line through “30,000 won” in her notebook.

The paper to pick up at the till is not an ordinary receipt. The airport needs a refund voucher, also called a goods sales confirmation form, and a simple receipt or card slip alone won’t do. It has to be a tax refund receipt marked with something like “Refund”. So take your passport when you go shopping, and ask for the refund paperwork first when you pay. Ask before you start choosing, too, whether the shop takes part in the scheme.

The first thing Mali moved to grey was a 12,000-won hand cream. It fell short of 15,000 won, so there was nothing to think about. Next came the shoot products bought in the company’s name. Items bought under a corporate name or by an agent don’t qualify. Mali comes to Seoul often for work, so she decided to keep receipts for her own purchases and the company’s in different wallets from the start, and that evening she wrote the new habit in her notebook.

The buyer has to qualify too, so Mali read down the conditions one line at a time with her own name in mind. You need to be a foreigner who doesn’t live in Korea and doesn’t earn income there, staying for less than 6 months. Mali lives in Bangkok and is paid in Bangkok, so none of these restrictions applied to her. Overseas Koreans who have lived abroad for 2 years or more and are staying in Korea for 3 months or less also qualify, while diplomats and US military personnel stationed in Korea, people employed in Korea and anyone who has stayed 6 months or more are left out. The items must leave the country with you within 3 months of the purchase date.

The range of goods is fairly wide. Clothes, shoes, bags, accessories, cosmetics, perfume, home appliances, ginseng and red ginseng all count, which covers most holiday shopping. Cooked food, services such as massage and anything bought in a duty-free shop don’t. That is why the massage Mali had on the second day of her trip never went into the receipt pile at all. She had received a service, not bought an item.

What is the difference between immediate, downtown and airport refunds? When you get the money, and up to how much

The three methods differ in when you get the money and how much you can spend in one go. “From how much” is the same for all three, at 15,000 won, but “up to how much” changes with the method. Once you know which box the price of your purchase falls into, the method has more or less chosen itself. Mali put down her colour cards too, and held each remaining receipt up to the limit column in the table below.

An immediate refund takes three steps. At the till your passport shows whether you qualify, you pay the price without the tax, and you leave the country. The shop checks your passport and sends the sale details to customs electronically, so nothing can start without it. There is no collecting money at the airport, which makes this the least work. These were the receipts in Mali’s green pile, and on the four slips for cream and lip colour, the tax had already come off at the till.

Immediate refunds have two rules of their own. One is the 5 million won total. If what you have bought by immediate refund since arrival, plus what you are about to pay, comes to more than 5 million won, that payment can’t go through as an immediate refund, and you take a voucher to the airport or a downtown counter instead. The other is the 3 months: if any item stays in Korea more than 3 months after you bought it, what you buy after that can’t have an immediate refund. So make sure the tax-free items leave with you as well.

A downtown refund gets you the money early. After buying the goods and getting a voucher, you can collect it at a counter or unmanned kiosk in the city without waiting for the airport. In exchange you need your passport, the voucher and a credit card as well, and the tax amount is held as security while you take the money first. All you have done is get paid early, so showing the goods, voucher and passport to customs on departure still lies ahead.

The airport refund has no limit on the purchase amount. So the more expensive the item, the more likely it is to end up on this route. In short: under 1 million won is an immediate refund, 1 million to 6 million won is downtown or the airport, and above 6 million won is the airport. Mali looked back and forth across the three boxes and marked the airport side. This trip had no spare afternoon for a downtown counter, and if customs had to happen anyway, she reckoned it was better to finish it all in one go at the airport.

Why can’t a 1 million won purchase get an immediate refund? Because the limit is “under”

If you pay exactly 1 million won in one go, you can’t have an immediate refund. The limit is “under” 1 million won, not “up to”. That figure is the amount for a single transaction, tax included. So an item with 1 million won on the price tag has to go the voucher route, to the airport or a downtown counter. It is the kind of thing people first hear at the till when buying an expensive bag or appliance.

Mali heard it when she bought her mother’s skin-care device. The price was exactly 1 million won. When she held out her passport, the assistant looked apologetic and said, “It’s exactly 1 million won, so no immediate refund, but I’ll give you the paperwork.” Mali blinked for a moment and then laughed out loud. She is someone who will fight over the tiniest shade of difference, and this time money had beaten her by a single won.

The voucher from that day went on top of the orange pile. The shops where she bought her sister’s gift sets didn’t do immediate refunds, so those vouchers gathered underneath it. Seven orange, four green and three grey: Mali wrote the numbers in her notebook and gave a satisfied nod. Then, on the back of the orange card, she wrote “Airport — get the money”. That note, which shrank everything to do at the airport to a single line, was going to trip her up once that night.

Can you open cosmetics you want a refund on? No, leave them sealed

Don’t open refund items, and don’t use them. Anything opened or used before you leave Korea doesn’t qualify. If customs selects you for inspection at the airport, you have to show the unopened goods. That rules out the trick of decanting cosmetics into small pots to save luggage space. If bulk is a worry when packing, choose a size you can carry when you buy.

This was the hardest rule of all for Mali. The orange pile included a winter lip set for her sister, and she felt she wouldn’t sleep without seeing the colours for herself. She had lifted the edge of the box’s plastic wrap with a fingernail when the grey pile caught her eye, and her hand stopped. Instead she made do with holding a colour card against the colour mark on the outside of the box. For someone at a beauty magazine, a lip colour she couldn’t open was quite a test of patience.

Keep your purchase receipts and refund paperwork with you until you leave. A refund can also be refused if the paperwork is incomplete. So check the name and amount at the till, and keep the papers together in one place rather than dropping them into a box. Mali put the orange pile in the same pocket as her passport, and so far she was doing well. The goods that went with those papers, however, she packed neatly at the very bottom of her suitcase and zipped it shut.

How much do you get back from a tax refund? Not the full VAT

What you get back is not the full VAT you paid. The operator running the refund takes its costs first, and an immediate refund at the shop can take those costs out as well. Mali had assumed she would get the full 10% back and had written “100,000 won?” next to her mother’s device. The table below is five lines from the rate table of one refund operator. It is that operator’s table, not a figure set by the government.

The right-hand column is the first amount in the band divided by 11, for an item whose only tax is VAT. Set it beside the middle column: on 1 million won, the VAT inside the price is about 90,900 won, and by this table the money back is 75,000 won. As the price rises within a band, the money back stays the same, so the gap widens. In the same table, 6 million won and above gets 90% of the VAT back.

So adding more to your basket for the sake of the refund is close to a loss. Mali crossed out “100,000 won?” and started writing “by this table, 75,000”, and found herself laughing. By this table, the refund she had missed on the 18,000-won lip balm because of her 30,000-won note came to 1,000 won. It wasn’t a sum worth being upset about. Small amounts are no great loss if you miss them, and the bigger the amount, the more the paperwork and the order of things are worth your attention.

What to do at Incheon Airport for a tax refund: the kiosk and customs before you check in your bag

At the airport, customs comes before the place that pays you. The airport’s guidance is to carry refund items and their paperwork with you rather than checking them in. Customs, too, insists that you show the goods and get them checked before you check in your bags. Do it the other way round and the goods you need to show have already gone off along the belt. Whichever you reach first, the counter or the kiosk, what matters is that the kiosk and customs are finished before a bag holding refund items goes on the belt.

Mali reached the airport at 8.50 p.m. She had gone all day without knowing this table, so she trusted the words on the back of the orange card, “Airport — get the money”, and went straight to the airline counter queue. There was plenty of time before the flight, and she thought that checking in the suitcase first would leave her hands free for collecting the money in the duty-free zone. What lay at the bottom of the suitcase had slipped her mind for a moment. As the queue shortened, she took off her coat, hung it over her arm and got out her passport.

The orange card came out of the passport pocket with it. With two people left ahead of her, Mali looked down at the card. The hand holding the vouchers was right here, but the goods that went with them were at the bottom of a suitcase about to go on the belt. Rina’s habit of looking at the deadline first came to mind, so she opened the customs guide on her phone, and one sentence jumped out straight away. At the words “before you check in your bags, without fail”, Mali’s finger stopped.

If refund items are in a bag you are checking in: tell the counter staff first

If a bag you are checking in holds refund items, tell the staff first at check-in. They will put a tag on the bag and hand it back to you. Take that bag to the kiosk, get the customs check, then put it on the large baggage belt right next to it. If you hand it over without a word you will have no goods to show, so speak up before the suitcase leaves your hands. In the queue, with two people still ahead of her, Mali rehearsed the sentence in her head several times.

Mali’s turn came. As befits someone whose head is arranged by colour, the words were out before she could stop them. “Wait, there’s orange in here.” The agent’s hands stopped, and for a moment the two of them just looked at each other. Even the person behind her seemed to be staring down at the suitcase, and Mali’s face went hot. She waved the vouchers and tried again. “There are tax refund items in here.”

The agent understood at once, tagged the suitcase and handed it back. Mali said thank you twice and wheeled the suitcase back out of the queue. She bowed an apology to the person behind her as well, and turned towards the kiosks. Getting the suitcase back is simply the set route when a checked bag holds refund items, so the only embarrassing part was that one word, “orange”. Because that word came out in time, the goods behind all seven vouchers were still in her hands.

The trouble was the bottom of the suitcase. A moment’s thought while packing saves a lot of rummaging in front of customs. Before leaving your room, gather refund items in one small bag. If they can go in the cabin, keeping them in your hand luggage from the start fits the airport’s guidance, and if they have to be checked in, put that bag at the very top of the suitcase. It also makes matching vouchers to goods easier.

If you are selected for customs inspection: show the unopened goods

When you scan your passport and refund voucher at the kiosk, it shows whether you are selected for customs inspection. If you are, go to the customs desk. On the 3rd floor it is near Counters E and J in Terminal 1 and near Counters F and G in Terminal 2, and at the desk you hand in your passport, the goods and the voucher. If the sale details have already reached customs electronically, there are times when you won’t need to hand in the paper form. Customs picks out cases to check whether the goods match the details.

Mali’s screen said she was selected for inspection. She wheeled her suitcase to the customs desk by Counters F and G. When she unzipped it, the boxes came out from under her winter jumpers, and because they were at the very bottom she had to lift out her clothes layer by layer. Looking at her belongings spread across the airport floor, Mali vowed to put those boxes on top next time. Handing over the vouchers, she gave herself a small pat on the back for not opening the lip set that evening.

Once she had shown that the plastic on the boxes was intact, Mali’s customs check was over. She put the tagged suitcase on the big belt right beside her. Only after watching it disappear into the wall did the tension leave her shoulders. In front of “Airport — get the money” on the back of the orange card, she squeezed in the words “customs before bags”. Now the note had the order right as well.

Where do you collect the refund? On the 3rd floor of the duty-free zone, after immigration

Mali still had no money in her hand after customs, because the money comes after immigration, in the duty-free zone. With only her passport in hand, she headed for the immigration queue. Times and locations are gathered in the table below. If you are boarding from the Concourse, use the automated kiosk in the centre of its 3rd floor, and there are refund counters at Gimpo, Gimhae and Jeju airports too, not just Incheon.

For anyone on a night flight, the staffed counter column becomes the schedule. On a daytime flight there is nothing to worry about, but reach the airport late in the evening and the closing time arrives first. The currency you get changes too. Staffed counters pay in won, US dollars, yuan and yen, while unmanned kiosks pay in won, Alipay and WeChat Pay.

If you want dollars, yen or yuan, you have to get there before the staffed counter closes. In that case, count backwards from the counter’s closing time rather than from your flight. Before closing time comes immigration, and before that come the counter, the kiosk and customs. The “checking the finish” Mali learnt from Rina works here just the same. Plan your arrival so that you still have counter time left after all of that.

Mali passed through immigration into the duty-free zone. The wide concourse, with moving walkways running side by side, was brightly lit. Her watch said 21:41, 11 minutes after the counter closed. That was about how long it had taken to turn her suitcase out to the very bottom. Still, she had her customs check, so all seven vouchers were intact, and with a short laugh she followed the gate numbers.

Where do you collect it on a night flight? The 24-hour automated kiosks

Even when the counters close, the automated kiosks run 24 hours a day. That goes for both Incheon terminals. When you scan your passport at the kiosk, the refund is paid according to the approved record. If you have already finished customs, that is all there is to do here. So neither a flight leaving around midnight nor an early-morning flight before the counters open is a reason to give up on the refund.

Mali walked past the closed counter and stood in front of a kiosk. She scanned her passport, the amount came up, and she took it in won. She comes to Seoul about twice a month anyway, and she liked the idea of next trip’s transport money already sitting in her purse. At a staffed counter she would have dithered for ages over which currency to take, so there was, if anything, less to decide. Counting the notes at the end of a long day, Mali smiled like someone who has won back one small corner of her mother’s device.

If the refund is large or you would rather not take cash, you can have it paid to your own card. Make sure that card is in your wallet on the day. For a traveller with no plans to return to Korea, this is easier than carrying leftover won home. Anyone like Mali who will be back can take won and spend it next time. Decide which suits your travel plans before you are standing at the kiosk.

The tax refund order Mali rewrote at the gate

When she sat down in front of the gate there were more than two hours left before the flight. Mali laid the three colour cards on her knee and opened the “Next trip” section of her notebook. On the first line she wrote “orange before bags”, and on the second “think of 1 million won as minus 1 won”. The third line was “my money, company money, separate wallets”. All three were sentences she had earned through trial and error that day.

Common Mistakes

• 01

  Trusting an old note and leaving your passport in your bag

  Mali’s 30,000-won note cost her the paperwork for an 18,000-won lip balm.

• 02

  Finding out about exactly 1 million won at the till

  For a big purchase, go in expecting a voucher.

• 03

  Opening the lip wrap out of curiosity

  The moment it is open, that item is out of the refund.

• 04

  Writing down only where to collect the money

  Mali remembered customs only near the front of the counter queue.

• 05

  Packing refund items at the bottom of the suitcase

  You end up lifting out your clothes layer by layer in front of customs.

FAQ

Recap — 30 seconds before you go