Markup and Margin Calculator (Japan)

Japan has no general price controls or regulated margins for ordinary goods and services. What the law does regulate is how a price is shown to consumers.

Under Art. 5 item 2 of the Act against Unjustifiable Premiums and Misleading Representations (景品表示法, often called 景表法), a price display that leads consumers to think the deal is considerably better than it is counts as a misleading representation. The Consumer Affairs Agency's price guideline applies this to double pricing, where a crossed-out former price sits beside the selling price. A former price is acceptable as 最近相当期間にわたって販売されていた価格 (a price actually charged for a reasonable recent period) only if, looking back 8 weeks from the start of the sale, it was charged for more than half of the time the item was on sale. Even then it fails if it was charged for less than 2 weeks in total, or if its last day of use was 2 or more weeks before the sale began.

A business that breaks this rule can be ordered to pay a surcharge of 3% of the sales of the item during the violation period (Art. 8). No surcharge is ordered if the amount is under JPY 1.5 million, or if the business neither knew of the problem nor failed to take due care.