Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 · rule

DE-R-016

Layer peppol·Checked against Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 2026.5

What does DE-R-016 mean? If both supplier and customer are located in Germany, and if one of the VAT codes S, Z, E, AE, K, G, L, or M is used, an invoice shall contain at least one of the following elements: "Seller VAT identifier" (BT-31) or "Seller tax registration identifier" (BT-32) or "SELLER TAX REPRESENTATIVE PARTY" (BG-11).

Why did my invoice fail DE-R-016?

On domestic German invoices where any of the VAT category codes S, Z, E, AE, K, G, L or M is used, the invoice must identify the seller for tax purposes: it needs at least one of the Seller VAT identifier (BT-31), the Seller tax registration identifier (BT-32), or a SELLER TAX REPRESENTATIVE PARTY group (BG-11). This guarantees the tax authority and buyer can attribute the VAT treatment to a registered seller. In UBL, BT-31 and BT-32 are carried in cac:AccountingSupplierParty/cac:Party/cac:PartyTaxScheme/cbc:CompanyID (with TaxScheme ID VAT for BT-31 and FC for BT-32).

Official rule text

If both supplier and customer are located in Germany, and if one of the VAT codes S, Z, E, AE, K, G, L, or M is used, an invoice shall contain at least one of the following elements: "Seller VAT identifier" (BT-31) or "Seller tax registration identifier" (BT-32) or "SELLER TAX REPRESENTATIVE PARTY" (BG-11).

Common causes

Seller has neither a PartyTaxScheme with the VAT number nor one with the tax registration number
The VAT identifier is present only on the buyer party
Only category O (out of scope) sellers may omit these — a taxable category was used without any seller tax identifier

How do I fix it?

<cac:AccountingSupplierParty>
  <cac:Party>
    <cac:PartyTaxScheme>
      <cbc:CompanyID>DE123456789</cbc:CompanyID>
      <cac:TaxScheme><cbc:ID>VAT</cbc:ID></cac:TaxScheme>
    </cac:PartyTaxScheme>
  </cac:Party>
</cac:AccountingSupplierParty>

Check your invoice against this rule

Paste it into the live demo, or call POST /v1/validate. See the quickstart.