The Hindu Business Line : Hair-splitting over unwanted hair removal

Hair is much in news. "Hair was `invited' to make offer," says BBC Sport. "ICC refutes Hair's claim," reports CricketZone.Com. "Baggage courier `collected women's hair'," informs ABC Regional Online, Australia. "American Indian denied unemployment aid after refusing to cut hair," states www.woi-tv.com.

And www.tempo.com.ph has a story dated August 28 that the Philippine Coast Guard has repeated its appeal to the public to donate human hair and chicken feathers to help clean-up the country's worst ever oil spill in Guimaras island. "Chicken feathers and human hair will be placed in sacks tied to bamboo poles and placed along the coastlines of affected villages," explains a related story in Scientific American.

To hair-watchers, a case of interest should be New Look Cosmetic Laser Centre vs Commissioner of Customs, Mumbai, which came up before a tax Tribunal recently. The company had imported `Ruby Star surgical laser' and claimed classification of the same under Chapter 90 of the Customs Tariff Act, titled `optical, photographic, cinematographic, measuring, checking, precision, medical or surgical instruments and apparatus.' Classified thus, New Look stood to gain from a benevolent Duty notification.

But the taxman insisted that the gadget be classified under Chapter 85, which is about `electrical machinery and equipment and parts thereof'. In this Chapter, heading 8510 is titled `shavers, hair clippers and hair removing appliances with self-contained electric motors'. A subhead numbered 8510.30 is devoted to `hair removing appliances,' and it appears after entries about shavers and hair clippers.

After hearing both the sides, Archana Wadhwa and S.S. Sekhon, Tribunal Members, studied the catalogue of the imported product. `A third generation system,' accommodating `the latest in hair removal techniques,' it said. "Designed to provide the most effective, reliable and theorography documented method of treating unwanted hair on a patient," stated the catalogue. That "the optical Q-switch mode allows the clinician to expand the use of `Ruby Star' in the treatment of benign pigment lesions and removal of amateur and professional tattoos," is more from the product literature that the Tribunal perused.

Wadhwa and Sekhon observed that the procedure indicated `a medical and surgical use'. It was "not meant as a substitute for use by any person or tonsorial artist in a hair dressing saloon, as a razor or other hair removal creams." To understand the difference between the procedures, if you want to do hair-splitting of how the unwanted hair is removed, here is a description: "The hair is removed, not by cutting or any other mechanical means/ method of uprooting... The laser creates a wavelength of light that is highly absorbed by melanin present in human hair shaft." The resultant heat damages the follicle and its ability to re-grow the hair.

The 8510.30 appliances, which are electro-mechanical ones, worked differently. These contraptions would "grip the hair and pluck it out at the root." How painfully described! No wonder, therefore, this heading appealed to the taxman. The Tribunal reasoned that 8510.30, relied on by the Department, would apply only to appliances that resulted in `mechanical uprooting or shearing', not to the gadget in question that vaporised hair root by laser heat.

A hairy quote to wrap is from Marcus Tullius Cicero: "It is foolish to tear one's hair in grief, as though sorrow would be made less by baldness." And to the despairing bald, here is a reassuring line from The Comedy of Errors: "Many a man hath more hair than wit."

ExParte@TheHindu.co.in

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