Is There VAT on Dog Food? Pet Food, Working Dog Food and the Excepted Item That Decides It

Is there VAT on dog food? The short answer

Yes, in almost every case. Dog food and pet food generally carry VAT at the standard rate of 20%, because pet food is an excepted item that is expressly removed from the zero rate for food. A narrow exception exists for food specially formulated and held out for sale exclusively for working dogs, but it never applies to biscuit or meal, which is standard-rated without exception.

That is the whole rule, and almost every page written about it gets it wrong in the same direction. The usual version is "working dogs are VAT free". That is wrong twice: the relief attaches to a product and its label rather than to a dog, and even a genuine working dog product loses it if the product happens to be biscuit or meal.

If you sell pet food, whether that is a pet shop, a farm supply store, a country store, a garden centre or a pub running a dog menu alongside the human one, this page is about getting the classification right on the shelf edge before the customer asks. If you are looking for the rate on food for people, that sits on the VAT on takeaway food page, and the per-item rates for menu goods are on VAT on soft drinks and food.

The rule and where it comes from

Zero-rating for food is given by Group 1 of Schedule 8 to the Value Added Tax Act 1994. Group 1 is built in two halves. The general items describe what is zero-rated, and animal feeding stuffs are within them, which is why people reach for the conclusion that dog food must be zero-rated too. The excepted items then remove specific things from that zero rate and push them back to the standard rate.

Excepted item 6 is the one that decides pet food. It reads:

"Pet foods, canned, packaged or prepared; packaged foods (not being pet foods) for birds other than poultry or game; and biscuits and meal for cats and dogs."

Three limbs, one excepted item. You can read it in the current consolidated text of Schedule 8 on legislation.gov.uk. The standard rate it falls back to is 20%, charged under section 2(1) of VATA 1994.

HMRC's working guidance is VAT Notice 701/15, Animals and animal food, and the paragraphs that matter here are 6.1, 6.4 and 6.5. Two sentences in that notice do most of the work. Paragraph 6.5: "All biscuit and meal for cats and dogs is standard-rated." Paragraph 6.4: "If a specially formulated food is held out for sale exclusively for working dogs it will come within the scope of the VAT relief, unless it is biscuit or meal."

Note the URL. The version of that notice address that contains "and-vat" in the middle returns a 404. The live page is the one linked above, with no "and-vat" in it. It is a small thing, but a lot of trade sites are linking customers to a dead page on the single most important citation in this area.

The three-way split

Read excepted item 6 alongside paragraphs 6.4 and 6.5 and dog food splits three ways. Every classification question you will meet is one of these three cases.

(a) Biscuit and meal for cats and dogs: standard-rated, unconditional

The final limb of item 6 carries no condition at all. It does not say "biscuit and meal held out for sale as pet food". It says biscuits and meal for cats and dogs, full stop. So the product form alone decides it. A biscuit or a meal for a cat or a dog is standard-rated at 20% whatever the packaging claims, whatever the buyer does for a living, and whatever shelf you put it on. This is the limb that catches people out, because it overrides the working dog wording entirely.

(b) Canned, packaged or prepared food held out as pet food: standard-rated

This is the ordinary case and covers the overwhelming majority of stock in a pet shop or a supermarket aisle. Tins, pouches, trays, dry complete foods, treats, anything canned, packaged or prepared and presented to the market as food for pets. Standard-rated at 20%.

(c) Specially formulated and held out exclusively for working dogs: zero-rated, unless biscuit or meal

This is the carve-out, and it has three conditions rather than one. The food must be specially formulated. It must be held out for sale exclusively for working dogs. And it must not be biscuit or meal. Fail any one of the three and the product is standard-rated. The relief is not a discount a customer claims, it is a classification the product either carries or does not.

"Held out for sale" is the test, not what the dog does

This is the sentence that most competing pages skip, and it is the reason the working dog exception disappoints almost everyone who hears about it.

"Held out for sale" describes how the product is presented to the market. That means the labelling on the bag or tin, the packaging design and wording, how the product is displayed in store, how it is described on the invoice, how it is advertised, and how it is listed in a catalogue or on a website. If the product is presented as suitable for dogs generally, it is held out as pet food and it is standard-rated.

The consequence runs in both directions and it is worth being blunt about it with customers.

• A shepherd buying an ordinary supermarket tin for a working collie pays 20%. The dog's job is irrelevant. The tin was held out as pet food.
• A customer with a pet spaniel that has never seen a field buying a product genuinely held out exclusively for working gun dogs pays nothing in VAT, because the product is zero-rated. The buyer's circumstances are equally irrelevant.

The single most common label that destroys the relief is the reassuring one. A bag that says it is suitable "for all breeds, size and age of dog" has held itself out as pet food. That description is the opposite of exclusive, so the product is standard-rated at 20% no matter what else the bag says about energy density or working conditions.

Because of that, the decision sits with the manufacturer and the way the product is brought to market. A retailer inherits the classification rather than choosing it. Putting a general-purpose product on a shelf headed "working dogs" does not change what the product is held out as, and it does not change the rate.

Boundary table: standard-rated at 20% against zero-rated

Same shop, same customer, same dog. The line runs through the product, not through the person.

The two "not available" rows are the most useful lines in the table. They are the quickest way to show a customer that the carve-out is narrow and that it lives on the label.

Which working categories qualify

Paragraph 6.4 of Notice 701/15 identifies the working categories the relief is built around. They include sheepdog breeds, assistance dogs, gun dogs and racing greyhounds.

Read that list for what it is. It is the manufacturer's route to a zero-rated product, not the buyer's route to a refund. A manufacturer designing a food specifically for working sheepdogs, and marketing it exclusively for them, can produce a zero-rated line. A customer whose dog falls into one of those categories gains nothing from the list on its own, because the classification was fixed by how the product was held out long before it reached the till.

Two further points that follow from the same paragraph. First, a product cannot hedge. Marketing that reaches for the working dog buyer and the general pet buyer at the same time has not held the product out exclusively, and exclusivity is a condition. Second, the biscuit and meal exclusion sits on top of all of it. A specially formulated, exclusively marketed working sheepdog biscuit is standard-rated, because the form of the product answers the question before the label gets a hearing.

Cat food, bird food and the rest of excepted item 6

The question "is there VAT on pet food" is broader than dogs, and item 6 answers it in three pieces.

Cat food. Canned, packaged or prepared cat food is pet food and is standard-rated. Biscuit and meal for cats is caught by the third limb as well, which names cats alongside dogs. There is no working cat equivalent of the paragraph 6.4 relief, so there is no route to zero-rating for cat food in any form. If a customer asks, the answer is a clean no.

Bird food. The middle limb of item 6 covers packaged foods, not being pet foods, for birds other than poultry or game. Packaged wild bird food in a garden centre sits inside that. Feed for poultry and game does not, because the limb excludes them by name. That is the distinction to check on a garden centre or country store shelf, where wild bird mixes and poultry feed can sit a metre apart.

Everything else. Horse feed, rabbit food, fish food and livestock feeding stuffs are not named in item 6. They are dealt with elsewhere in Notice 701/15 and the treatment turns on the product and how it is presented. Do not read across from dog food. Check the notice for the line you are actually selling.

Worked examples

The arithmetic is the easy part once the classification is settled. The standard rate is 20%.

Example 1: a country store's working sheepdog food

A country store sells a 15kg sack of specially formulated working sheepdog food at £42.00. The product is held out for sale exclusively for working dogs and it is not biscuit or meal, so it is zero-rated. The customer pays £42.00 and there is no VAT inside that price. The store records a zero-rated supply of £42.00 and no output tax.

Example 2: the same store, same shelf, dog biscuit

The same store sells a 15kg sack of dog biscuit at £42.00. Biscuit is standard-rated unconditionally, so the price is VAT-inclusive: £42.00 divided by 1.2 gives a net price of £35.00, and the VAT element is £7.00. Same store, same shelf, same customer, same dog, a different rate, purely because of the form the product takes.

That pair is worth keeping behind the counter. It is the fastest way to explain to a customer why two sacks at the same shelf price are not the same supply.

Example 3: a pet shop's tinned case

A pet shop sells a case of tins at £24.00, labelled as suitable for all breeds and ages. It is held out as pet food, so it is standard-rated: £20.00 net plus £4.00 of VAT. A customer who genuinely owns a working dog cannot reclaim that £4.00 on the strength of the dog's job, because the test is how the product was held out for sale, not who bought it. Whether that customer's business can recover the VAT as input tax on a business cost is a different question entirely, with its own conditions, and it is not decided by excepted item 6. That one is worth putting to a VAT adviser through the hospitality VAT service rather than answering across a counter.

What people get wrong

Six errors, in roughly the order you will hear them.

"Working dogs are VAT free." They are not. Nothing about a dog is VAT free or VAT liable. The relief attaches to a product that is specially formulated and held out for sale exclusively for working dogs. It attaches to the label, not to the animal.

"I own a working dog, so I should not be charged VAT." The test is how the product was held out for sale. Buying an ordinary pet food for a working dog does not zero-rate it, and the retailer has no discretion to treat it differently at the till.

"It says working dogs on the bag, so it is zero-rated." Not if it is biscuit or meal. That limb of item 6 is unconditional and catches cats and dogs alike. Paragraph 6.4 says as much in its own closing words: the relief applies "unless it is biscuit or meal".

"A product suitable for all breeds and ages can still be working dog food." No. That description holds the product out as pet food, which makes it standard-rated. Exclusivity is a condition, not a marketing preference.

"Pet food must be zero-rated because food is zero-rated." Food for human consumption is the general item. Pet food is expressly excepted back out of it by item 6, in exactly the way confectionery, crisps and savoury snacks, soft drinks and alcohol are excepted on the human side.

"There is a working cat equivalent." There is not. Paragraph 6.4 is about working dogs, and the biscuit and meal limb names cats directly. Cat food has no zero-rated route.

What this means if you sell the product

Three practical consequences for a retailer, a farm shop or any venue selling animal food alongside its main trade.

First, classify by product line, not by aisle. A shelf marked "working dogs" is a merchandising decision. The VAT liability travels with the individual product's formulation and the way its manufacturer holds it out. Two products next to each other under the same sign can carry different rates, and both can be correct.

Second, keep the evidence with the line. If a product is zero-rated because it is held out exclusively for working dogs, the packaging, the supplier's product sheet and the catalogue entry are what support that treatment. Those are the documents that answer the question if the treatment is ever queried, and they are the documents that change when a supplier quietly reformulates or rewords a bag.

Third, check when a supplier changes the wording. The liability of a line is not a permanent property of the brand. It follows the current presentation. A range that broadens its marketing to "all dogs" has changed its own classification, and the first place that surfaces is usually a supplier invoice suddenly carrying VAT where it did not before.

Fourth, give the counter a script. Most of the friction in this area is a conversation rather than a calculation, and it always runs the same way: a customer with a genuine working dog asks why they are being charged 20% on a bag that says working dogs on it. The answer that ends the conversation politely is short. The rate is set by the product, the law removes pet food from zero-rating by name, and biscuit and meal is standard-rated whatever the bag says. Point at the zero-rated line on the same shelf if you stock one, because that is the fastest proof that you are not applying a blanket rate for convenience. Staff who can say that in two sentences avoid the escalation, and they also avoid the worse outcome, which is a well-meaning colleague zero-rating a standard-rated sale to settle an argument and leaving an under-declared output tax position behind on the till.

Fifth, do not let a hospitality setting change the analysis. A pub serving a dog menu, a cafe selling treats at the counter or a farm shop with a feed corner is selling the same goods under the same excepted item. There is no eat-in override here, because the catering rules that standard-rate anything consumed on the premises apply to food for human consumption. Pet food is already standard-rated by item 6 before that question arises, and the rare zero-rated working dog line is a retail supply of goods either way.

If any of that overlaps with a wider food VAT question on the human side of the counter, the parent page on VAT on takeaway food covers the hot and cold boundary and the eat-in rule, and the food and drink VAT rate checker will settle a single menu item quickly.

Sources and further reading

• VATA 1994, Schedule 8, Group 1, general items and excepted items, including excepted item 6.
• VATA 1994 section 2(1), the standard rate of 20%.
• VAT Notice 701/15, Animals and animal food, paragraphs 6.1, 6.4 and 6.5.
• VAT Notice 701/14, Food products and VAT, for the human food side and its own excepted items.

Related reading on this site

• VAT on takeaway food, the food VAT parent page covering hot, cold and eat-in.
• VAT on soft drinks and food, the rate for every item on a menu.
• Food and drink VAT rate checker.
• Hospitality VAT service.