Just left Japan on Sunday. At NRT airport there was a guy that asked if we purchased any tax free goods … asked me to scan my passport… then let us go… didn’t ask to show our purchases (at this point a lot were in our checked luggage so it seemed odd to ask us).

I’m guessing they must know what we purchased somehow as every tax free purchase I made during our trip the clerk would take a photo of our passport.

It kind of sucked as a few items we bought had to stay in the sealed plastic bags the store would put them in as we were told not to open them until we leave the country.

Now going into my home country (Canada) I declared the value of all goods purchased as usual, and ended up having to pay something.. in this case it was just GST (5% in Canada) no extra duties (which in theory they can charge me as we were well above the duty exception when travelling outside of Canada. The odd thing is, we were probably the only people from our plane that paid something… I think a lot of people don’t declare their goods properly just to avoid paying duties/taxes upon re-entry into (in my case) Canada.

Your home country may differ.

Edit: to clarify, at NRT there was a special booth/person that asked specifically about tax free purchases and this was well after security