Rule BR-IC-05
An intra-community supply line must have a VAT rate of zero
On a line marked as an intra-community supply, the VAT rate is zero, because the goods are taxed in the country of arrival.
Business term BT-152, Invoiced item VAT rate (with BT-151, category code K). Source: EN 16931. Our wording, not the normative text, which is published in the Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 rule list and was checked against it on 2026-08-16.
Why it fires on invoices that look fine
Almost nobody hits this rule because they forgot the field exists. They hit it because something between their system and the document dropped it, changed its shape, or filled it with a value that is right somewhere else. These are the causes worth checking first.
- The category code and the rule prefix do not match, which sends people looking in the wrong place: the VAT category CODE is K, and the rule family is named IC. Searching for BR-K-05 finds nothing because it does not exist.
- The rate carries the seller's domestic percentage while the category is correctly K, the same copy-from-product-record problem as reverse charge.
- The supply was categorised as intra-community without the buyer's VAT number being validated, and the system then hedged by leaving a rate in place.
What to change
- Set the rate to 0 on every line whose category is K.
- Validate the buyer's VAT number before choosing this category. An intra-community supply to a customer whose number does not check out is a supply you may owe domestic VAT on, and no invoice format will catch that for you.
- If your validator reports something that looks like BR-K-05, it is either paraphrasing or wrong. The published identifier is BR-IC-05.
The validator runs in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, and you can confirm that yourself with the network panel open.
Rules you are likely to hit next
A document that breaks BR-IC-05 usually breaks one of these too, because the same mapping gap tends to affect neighbouring fields.
- BR-AE-05: reverse charge lines need a VAT rate of zero
- BR-CL-*: codelists: currency, country, VAT category, invoice type
Questions people actually ask
- What does BR-IC-05 mean?
- On a line marked as an intra-community supply, the VAT rate is zero, because the goods are taxed in the country of arrival.
- Which field does BR-IC-05 apply to?
- BT-152, Invoiced item VAT rate (with BT-151, category code K). That is the name the semantic model uses, which is what you search for in your own system's mapping when the identifier alone does not tell you which field to look at.
- Does our validator check BR-IC-05?
- Yes. Paste your invoice data into the free validator and it reports this rule with the value it actually saw, without the document leaving your browser.