Fix BR-20: Tax representative country code missing

What does BR-20 mean?

The Seller tax representative postal address (BG-12) must carry a Tax representative country code (BT-69) if the invoice names a Seller tax representative party (BG-11). The country code sits as ram:CountryID in the address and follows the two-letter format under ISO 3166-1. The rule applies only if a tax representative is stated.

Common causes of BR-20

• The element ram:CountryID is missing from the ram:PostalTradeAddress of the tax representative.
• The country name was entered as plain text instead of the country code.
• The code has the wrong format, for example three letters or lower case.

How to fix BR-20

1. Find the faulty spot in the XML. Open the XML of the invoice and go to field BT-69 along this XPath://rsm:SupplyChainTradeTransaction/ram:ApplicableHeaderTradeAgreement/ram:SellerTaxRepresentativeTradeParty/ram:PostalTradeAddress/ram:CountryID
2. Apply the fix. Add the element ram:CountryID with the ISO 3166-1 code of two capital letters in the ram:PostalTradeAddress of the tax representative, for example DE.
3. Validate again. Save the file and validate it again to check that BR-20 is no longer reported.

Before / after: the XML example

This is the spot in question before and after the fix (Cross Industry Invoice, ZUGFeRD/Factur-X).

<ram:SellerTaxRepresentativeTradeParty>
  <ram:Name>Steuerkanzlei Weber und Partner</ram:Name>
  <ram:PostalTradeAddress>
    <ram:PostcodeCode>10115</ram:PostcodeCode>
    <ram:CityName>Berlin</ram:CityName>
  </ram:PostalTradeAddress>
</ram:SellerTaxRepresentativeTradeParty>

<ram:SellerTaxRepresentativeTradeParty>
  <ram:Name>Steuerkanzlei Weber und Partner</ram:Name>
  <ram:PostalTradeAddress>
    <ram:PostcodeCode>10115</ram:PostcodeCode>
    <ram:CityName>Berlin</ram:CityName>
    <ram:CountryID>DE</ram:CountryID>
  </ram:PostalTradeAddress>
</ram:SellerTaxRepresentativeTradeParty>

Frequent questions about BR-20

Related error codes

Check BR-20 automatically

Instead of digging through the XML by hand you can validate your ZUGFeRD or XRechnung file online – upload the PDF or the XML and you get every error with rule ID, affected field, fix and XPath, as a readable report or as JSON through the API.