Mutabiq checks Saudi ZATCA Phase 2 e-invoice XML before you submit it: pre-validation against published ZATCA requirements, not an approval by the authority. This page explains one rule, BR-E-09.
Five checks a month on the Free plan. The file is checked in memory and is never stored.
The message ZATCA prints
[BR-E-09]-The VAT category tax amount (BT-117) In a VAT breakdown (BG-23) where the VAT category code (BT-118) equals "Exempt from VAT" shall equal 0 (zero).
Also cited in this report
BR-CO-15
[BR-CO-15]-Invoice total amount with VAT (BT-112) = Invoice total amount without VAT (BT-109) + Invoice total VAT amount (BT-110).
[BR-CO-17]-VAT category tax amount (BT-117) = VAT category taxable amount (BT-116) x (VAT category rate (BT-119) / 100), rounded to two decimals.
What Mutabiq reports
One entry for each way this rule can be reported.
Reported as
What kind of value was found — empty, not_15_digits and the like — never the value itself.
Exempt VAT breakdown states no VAT amount
Reported astax_amount_missingthe VAT amount is missing
What is wrong
A cac:TaxSubtotal directly under the invoice's own cac:TaxTotal is coded E - exempt - under the VAT tax scheme and carries no cbc:TaxAmount. EN 16931 rule BR-E-09, which ZATCA runs, requires the VAT category tax amount (BT-117) of an exempt breakdown to be zero, and it tests that by comparing the element's value against nought. An absent element is an empty sequence and the comparison is false, so the amount has to be written out as zero.
What to check in your ERP
Write cbc:TaxAmount with a value of zero in every exempt breakdown, formatted to two decimals and carrying the same currencyID attribute as the other amounts. The usual cause is an export that suppresses amount elements whose value is nought, or a tax summary that returns null rather than zero for a category with no tax. The same suppression will be affecting your zero-rated and out-of-scope breakdowns, so fix it once at the template.
Exempt VAT breakdown states a VAT amount that is not zero
Reported astax_amount_not_zerothe VAT amount is not zero
What is wrong
A cac:TaxSubtotal directly under the invoice's own cac:TaxTotal is coded E - exempt - under the VAT tax scheme and its cbc:TaxAmount is not zero. EN 16931 rule BR-E-09, which ZATCA runs, requires an exempt breakdown to carry no VAT at all. Expect other notes with this one: the document totals stop reconciling as soon as a breakdown's VAT amount moves, so BR-CO-14, BR-CO-15 and BR-CO-17 commonly appear alongside it and the breakdown is the defect they are all reporting.
What to check in your ERP
Either the amount belongs to another category or the category letter is wrong. The frequent cause is a breakdown grouped by tax code where several codes were mapped to the letter E and one of them is actually taxed, so a taxed group has been folded into the exempt one. Another is the document VAT total being copied into each breakdown block instead of the per-category figure. Check the per-category summary your tax engine produces and confirm the exempt group really carries no tax there.
The clause that runs
Quoted from the validation-rule stylesheet ZATCA publishes, at the file and line named below. The executed guard is what the check runs; the reported test is what it prints when it fails, and the two are not always the same.
As shipped in ZATCA SDK 3.4.8: the copy quoted here is, byte for byte, the file that release ships. The date in the file name is the name ZATCA gives the file; the rules in it are those of SDK 3.4.8.
A worked example
A synthetic document from the measured test corpus that trips this rule, shown where it differs from one that passed. Mutabiq's report names the class of the value, never the value itself.