In Mark Glenn Ltd v HMRC [2026] UKUT 00034, the Upper Tribunal (UT) found that the supply of a female hair loss treatment system was zero-rated for VAT purposes. In the circumstances, hair loss was a disability, and the treatment consisted of adapting goods to suit the condition of the disabled person.
Mark Glenn Ltd provided its customers with a method of treating female hair loss, known as the Kinsey System.
- The Kinsey System involves a custom-made wig being placed over the area of hair loss with additional wig mesh where necessary.
- Existing strands of human hair underneath the mesh are pulled through, and the wig sits in place like a second skin, with native hair poking through the mesh alongside the wig hair.
- The hair is styled and cut. The client typically returned every six weeks for maintenance.
- None of the staff of Mark Glenn Ltd were medical practitioners.
- Mark Glenn Ltd treated its supplies of the Kinsey System as zero-rated for VAT.
- In April 2020, HMRC opened a compliance check and subsequently issued a VAT assessment of £165,821 and Notices of Amendment totalling £76,814 on the basis that the supplies were standard-rated. This position was upheld at Statutory review.
- Mark Glenn Ltd Appealed to the First Tier Tribunal (FTT).
It was agreed that the Kinsey System represented the Supply of a service and not the supply of goods.
To be Zero-rated under Group 12, Schedule 8, of VATA 1994, the supply had to be made to a disabled person. The meaning of a disabled person is “any person who is chronically sick or disabled”.
VAT Notice 701/7 states that a person is chronically sick or disabled if they are a person with:
- A physical or mental impairment that has a long-term and substantial adverse effect on their ability to carry out everyday activities.
- A condition which the medical profession treats as a chronic sickness, such as diabetes.
The FTT dismissed the appeal, finding that:
- Significant hair loss or baldness in women is not, in itself, a disability. It is not:
- An impairment. In addition, it does not have a long-term and substantial adverse effect on the ability of women to carry out everyday activities.
- A chronic illness: it is not treated as such by the medical profession.
- The Kinsey System was not designed solely for the relief of a severe impairment or severe injury, nor was it the supply of services of adapting goods to suit a disabled person’s condition.
- It was a labour-intensive system allowing for a semi-permanent transformation that required regular maintenance. It was not the adaptation of a wig.
- Given the need for maintenance, to find that the Kinsey System was a supply of services of adapting goods would be to dissect artificially what the Kinsey System does.
Mark Glenn Ltd appealed to the Upper Tribunal (UT) on several grounds, two of which were allowed:
- Ground 1: the FTT did not explain why baldness in women was not a physical or mental impairment which had a long-term and substantial adverse effect on their ability to carry out everyday activities.
- Ground 3: the FTT erred in finding that the adaptation of individual fibres into the mesh to specifically address the individual hair loss suffered and was unique to each client, was not a supply to a disabled person of services of adapting goods to suit their condition.
The UT considered the FTT's errors of law under Ground 1 and Ground 3 to be material. As such, the FTT's decision was set aside and remade. The UT found that:
- The term 'disability' is not statutorily defined.
- The question of whether a condition amounts to a disability should recognise that the impact of the condition may arise from the background social reality of how people with the condition are treated.
- Severe hair loss in women constitutes an impairment that adversely affects the ability to carry out everyday activities that involve being visible to others in public, including work, leisure, socialising, self-care and caring for others.
- The impairment did not arise because hair loss physically prevents participation in such activities, but because of the distress that would ordinarily be experienced by a woman with severe hair loss if no steps were taken to conceal it.
- Such distress arises from the cultural significance of hair to female identity, societal expectations regarding appearance, and the different standards applied to women.
- The women treated by Mark Glenn Ltd, with baldness or patchy hair loss rather than mere thinning, were, by virtue of that condition (an impairment), 'disabled' within the meaning of the VAT legislation.
- The Kinsey System was one of adapting goods to suit the condition of the disabled person in circumstances where the condition is the lack of hair.
- The way the hairpiece was constructed and how the artificial hair strands were fixed would vary according to the particular individual's pattern of hair loss.
- The maintenance process included in the overall supply similarly involved adjusting the anchor points of the goods to make sure they fit with the woman’s remaining hair. This could similarly be described as adapting the goods.
- Each of the supplies in question fell within the terms of Item 3 of Group 12 and was therefore zero-rated.
The appeal was allowed.
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