The calculator above answers one question: given a receipt total and the operator behind it, what do the published rules and tables allow you to get back? It does not predict a payout. For one operator it returns a figure from that operator’s own table. For every other operator, and for an immediate refund at the till, it returns a ceiling: the VAT inside the price, less a fee that nobody publishes.
Read the result that way, and check the receipt before you type it in.
Find the operator first
Korea Tourism Organization lists five refund operators whose marks identify a participating shop: Global Blue, Global Tax Free, Easy Tax Refund, CubeRefund and eTAX FREE. That list is a restatement, not the register of designated operators, so a shop may carry a name that is not on it. If yours is not one of the five, choose any operator that publishes no table: the ceiling is the same.
Then choose the route: refund after purchase, or immediate refund at the shop. They give different kinds of answer.
What each result means
| You choose | The calculator returns | How to read it |
|---|---|---|
| Global Tax Free, after purchase, ₩15,000 to ₩5,999,999 | The band amount from Global Tax Free’s published table | A table figure, labelled as that operator’s table |
| Global Tax Free, after purchase, ₩6,000,000 or more | 90% of the VAT, cut to the thousand won | The table’s own footnote rule, again that operator’s figure |
| Global Blue, CubeRefund, Easy Tax Refund or eTAX FREE, after purchase | Up to the VAT inside the price, less the operator’s fee | A ceiling. No refund table and no fee are published |
| Any operator, immediate refund | Up to the VAT inside the price, less any operator fee | A ceiling, not the Global Tax Free band figure |
| Under ₩15,000 | No refund | Below the minimum on every route |
Why only one operator gives an exact figure
Global Tax Free publishes a table of 80 bands, matching purchase total to refund amount from ₩15,000 up to ₩5,999,999, and pays 90% of the VAT from ₩6,000,000 up. The table sits on its Korean merchant site. Its English traveller pages carry no refund table, and the English after-purchase page gives only the ₩15,000 minimum, so an English-only reader never sees the table, which is why the calculator carries it. The page prints no effective date, so the calculator shows the date it was read: 14 October 2026.
Global Tax Free also does not say which of its services (after purchase, downtown or immediate) the table covers. The calculator therefore calls the result “Global Tax Free’s published table” and never “what the route pays”. Do not read the gap between the VAT and a band figure as the operator’s fee either: the operator does not say how the table is built.
The other four publish no table of refund amounts on the public pages reached. Global Blue describes its own estimate as “the VAT, less Global Blue’s handling fee” and publishes no Korea fee. Korean law lets an operator deduct a fee in an amount the National Tax Service approves. Neither the law nor the operators publish that amount, so this page prints no fee and no won refund for those four.
How the ceiling is worked out
Korea’s VAT rate is 10%, so the VAT inside a tax-included price is one-eleventh of it. The calculator cuts that to the whole won, so the ceiling is never overstated. No source says whether to round or cut, so the truncation is the calculator’s choice, not a rule.
Four examples, each for a receipt at a shop that is designated for tax refunds:
- ₩250,000 at Global Tax Free, refund after purchase. The band from ₩250,000 to ₩274,999 gives ₩15,000.
- ₩250,000 at Global Blue, refund after purchase. The VAT inside is up to ₩22,727, less Global Blue’s fee. One result is a table amount and the other a ceiling, so do not rank operators by the two numbers.
- ₩990,000, immediate refund, any operator. Up to ₩90,000 comes off the price, less any operator fee. The receipt sits just under the immediate-refund limit.
- ₩7,000,000 at Global Tax Free. The 90% rule gives ₩572,000. The footnote drops the hundreds digit and everything below it, and the operator’s own calculator on that page returned ₩572,000 for this total, which is the reading used. The VAT inside is up to ₩636,363. At this size the money comes only after customs confirms the goods left.
The immediate refund at the till
An immediate refund takes the tax out of the price at the till, so you pay less up front instead of claiming money back later. It is available only when all of these hold, and the calculator checks only the first:
- the receipt is ₩15,000 or more and under ₩1,000,000;
- the total of your immediate-refund receipts since you arrived, including this one, is ₩5,000,000 or less;
- the shop is set up for it. CubeRefund says its immediate refund works only at shops with passport readers.
The decree does not say whether the till counts the receipt in front of it in that running total, so plan around the tighter reading, which counts it. The calculator sees one receipt, not your earlier purchases, so keep the running total yourself. And if goods you bought stay in Korea more than 3 months after purchase, immediate refunds stop for purchases made after that period.
The operators word what is deducted differently across their own pages, in places the tax amount and in others the refund amount. Because the fee is unpublished too, the saving at the till is always “up to”.
Totals that fall outside a route
- Under ₩15,000, tax included: no refund on any route. The minimum counts VAT and any individual consumption tax, and it applies per receipt.
- ₩1,000,000 or more: no immediate refund. The calculator tells you to choose refund after purchase.
- Above ₩6,000,000: the refund paid before the goods leave, which operators run as a downtown refund (시내환급), is unavailable. The money comes after customs confirms the export. No source reached states a ceiling for that later route.
These limits come from the decree text in force from 2 January 2026 and its enforcement rule, read on 14 October 2026, not from operator pages. Some operator pages say otherwise. Easy Tax Refund and eTAX FREE still state a ₩30,000 minimum, and Global Tax Free’s trust site states lower immediate-refund limits and a narrower downtown band than the decree. The calculator follows the decree. A shop can still decline a slip the decree allows, so treat the result as the statutory position, not a promise from the till.
What the calculator does not count
- The operator’s fee. It is unpublished, so every ceiling is “less the fee” with no number.
- Individual consumption tax. Some goods carry this tax on top of VAT: jewellery, precious-metal goods and high-grade watches, carpets, bags, furs and furniture. It reaches only the part of the price above a per-item threshold set by decree, and it is refunded under the same scheme. For those items the tax inside the price is higher than the calculator shows, and the calculator does not estimate it. Prices at tax-refund shops include the tax.
- Combined receipts. The calculator treats each receipt as one transaction. No source reached says whether separate same-day receipts at one shop can be added together to reach a threshold, so do not plan on it.
- Whether you qualify. The result assumes a non-resident visitor buying at a designated shop. Who qualifies is in Korea’s tax refund guide, which also covers the routes and the airport steps.
Duty-free shops are a separate route from tax-refund shops; the Korea duty free guide covers collection and your allowance coming back in. For what to buy and where, see What to Buy in Korea.