Rules / BR-20 · Markdown

BR-20

EN 16931-1 layer: en16931

Checked against Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 2026.5

What does BR-20 mean? The Seller tax representative postal address (BG-12) shall contain a Tax representative country code (BT-69), if the Seller (BG-4) has a Seller tax representative party (BG-11).

Why did my invoice fail BR-20?

If the Seller (BG-4) has a Seller tax representative party (BG-11), that representative's postal address (BG-12) must include a Tax representative country code (BT-69). The country code fixes the jurisdiction of the VAT representative and is the one mandatory element of the address group. This rule enforces that the representative's country is always stated.

Official rule text

The Seller tax representative postal address (BG-12) shall contain a Tax representative country code (BT-69), if the Seller (BG-4) has a Seller tax representative party (BG-11).

Common causes

• The tax representative's cac:PostalAddress has no cac:Country/cbc:IdentificationCode.
• The country was given as free text in AddressLine instead of the coded IdentificationCode element.
• An invalid or non-ISO-3166 country code was used, so the required code is effectively missing.

How do I fix it?

<cac:TaxRepresentativeParty>
  <cac:PostalAddress>
    <cac:Country>
      <cbc:IdentificationCode>DE</cbc:IdentificationCode>
    </cac:Country>
  </cac:PostalAddress>
</cac:TaxRepresentativeParty>

Related rules

BR-01 · BR-02 · BR-03 · BR-04 · BR-05 · BR-06 · BR-07 · BR-08