BR-Z-05Zero-rated invoice line carries no VAT rate
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-Z-05.
Five checks a month on the Free plan. The file is checked in memory and is never stored.
The message ZATCA prints
[BR-Z-05]-In an Invoice line (BG-25) where the Invoiced item VAT category code (BT-151) is "Zero rated" the Invoiced item VAT rate (BT-152) shall be 0 (zero).
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.
Zero-rated invoice line carries no VAT rate
Reported asrate_missingthe rate is missing
What is wrong
An invoice line's cac:Item/cac:ClassifiedTaxCategory is coded Z - zero-rated - under the VAT tax scheme and carries no cbc:Percent element. EN 16931 rule BR-Z-05, which ZATCA runs, requires the line's VAT rate (BT-152) to be zero, and it tests that by comparing the element's value against nought. An element that is not there is an empty sequence, and a comparison against an empty sequence is false, so an absent rate fails the rule exactly as a wrong one would. Zero has to be written out; it cannot be left implied.
What to check in your ERP
The line's rate belongs in cac:InvoiceLine/cac:Item/cac:ClassifiedTaxCategory/cbc:Percent, and it must be present with a value of zero. The usual cause is an export that writes cbc:Percent only when the tax engine returns a non-zero rate, or a tax code set up with an empty rate rather than a rate of zero because the supply carries no VAT. Check the zero-rated tax codes in your VAT code table and confirm each one holds a numeric zero.
Zero-rated invoice line carries a VAT rate that is not zero
Reported asrate_not_zerothe rate is not zero
What is wrong
An invoice line's cac:Item/cac:ClassifiedTaxCategory is coded Z - zero-rated - under the VAT tax scheme and its cbc:Percent is not zero. EN 16931 rule BR-Z-05, which ZATCA runs, requires the line's VAT rate (BT-152) on a zero-rated line to be zero. The category code and the rate on the same line contradict each other, and it is the pair that is wrong rather than either field on its own: a supply taxed at a rate is standard rated (S), and a supply at nought per cent is zero-rated (Z).
What to check in your ERP
Two fields on one line come from the same tax code in most systems, so start at the tax code rather than at the XML. The common cause is a code whose category letter was changed to Z - for an export or a listed supply - while its rate was left at the standard rate, or the reverse, where the rate was zeroed on the invoice by hand and the category was not. Confirm which of the two the accounting treatment actually is, then fix the tax code so every future line follows.
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.