Furusato Nozei with Rakuten Ichiba (楽天市場)
Furusato Nozei (which I’ll refer to as FN) is a tax mechanism to get more value out of paying taxes. To find out more about the intricacies of FN, check out this article. There are many ways to make FN donations, Rakuten Ichiba (楽天市場, which I’ll call “Rakuten” for short) is one of them, and you can check out the reasons for using it in this article. This guide is about how to actually use Rakuten for FN.
Before we start
Make sure the name and address in Rakuten matches that on the certificate of residence (住民票 jūminhyō) because that’s what the tax forms will be issued under. More details here.
Rakuten FN landing page
The landing page is https://event.rakuten.co.jp/furusato/ and I recommend always starting from this page when doing FN. You know you’re on the right page if you see this logo and 楽天ふるさと納税. It’s important to start from this page because it’s easy to navigate to “regular” non-FN shops while searching or clicking around.
Estimate tax limit
This step is completely optional. Rakuten provides a calculator to estimate how much you can use on FN. On the landing page, look for this button that brings us to the FN マイページ “my page” (or use https://event.rakuten.co.jp/furusato/mypage/).
This brings us to this box to input annual salary, marital status and dependant status. The result is an estimate for the current year. If you’re signed in, you can save this estimate and Rakuten will adjust it as you make FN purchases.
Find the product
This is the fun part where we search for products to buy. From the landing page, either search for keywords, or browse the top ranked products in the 人気の返礼品ランキング section, or use the price/category filters in the sidebar.
We’ll discuss later what to do if you want to buy a product, but from here on it’s just like regular shopping on Rakuten, so if you’ve used Rakuten before this would look familiar. If you’re new to Rakuten though, here’s a short primer.
Detour: navigating the product
When you click into a product, you’ll see the product details page that’s typical of any other regular Rakuten listing. And by that I mean that the product listing page is usually a bunch of pictures showcasing the product and shop, with the actual product listing somewhere in the middle of the page. You’re looking for three sections, a section like this that has the product title and price.
This section that shows the rating and reviews.
And this section that shows product details in a more structured format.
One aspect different from regular Rakuten shopping is that some FN products sometimes take months to deliver, and you can check that in the 配送予定 section.
Detour: navigating the shop
Meanwhile, we can navigate to the other products of the “shop” by looking for a トップページ link, or clicking the city’s name at the top.
Each “shop” is a city in Japan offering products for FN. To find products within the city, either browse from the sidebar, banners or look for a search box (search boxes are usually found on the top right of the page, or above the sidebar, or in the middle right below the main banner).
Buy the product
Let’s buy the product! Unlike regular Rakuten purchases, FN products come with a form that looks like this that range from 3–9 questions. These are usually to verify that you acknowledge FN terms, and sometimes give you a choice to indicate how you’d want the city to spend your FN donation, and whether you’d want your name to be indicated.
The single most important drop-down is the one that asks if you need a one-stop form for tax purposes. Choose the option that says yes (look for the option that says ワンストップ and 必要, or look for the question about one-stop form and choose 希望する “I wish to receive it”).
Select the drop-downs, and then hit the 寄付を申込む “make a donation” button, which brings us to the confirmation page. At this point you should verify that the product name starts with 【ふるさと納税】, then hit the red button.
This adds the product into the shopping cart. From this point, the process is just like regular Rakuten shopping. You can add multiple items to the cart to check out together (make sure the purchase amount stays below the estimated limit!) To make payment, click the redご購入手続き button and proceed.
Post-purchase
Now we wait for the city to send the product(s) and the one-stop form. They may arrive in separate shipments in either order. Remember to do up the one-stop form!
The FN mypage will also have been updated with the purchase, showing the total number of cities donated to, total FN spend on Rakuten, remaining FN estimate, and a link to the current year purchases to easily make repeat orders.
