Tax currency code (BT-6) missing

What does this mean?

Two separate fields. The invoice currency (BT-5) is what the amounts are expressed in — what you priced and what the customer pays. The tax currency (BT-6) is the currency the VAT is accounted in, which on a Saudi invoice is SAR. This code checks one thing: that BT-6 is on the document at all.

It is not conditional. There is no shape of Saudi e-invoice that leaves the tax currency out, and an invoice entirely in SAR is not an exception — it says SAR explicitly, in an element of its own.

Three rules sit on this field and it helps to keep them apart. This one, an error, says BT-6 must exist. BR-KSA-EN16931-02, also an error, says its value must be SAR. BR-KSA-EN16931-09, a warning, governs what declaring BT-6 then obliges the document to carry: exactly one tax total block with no breakdown inside it, holding the VAT amount in SAR.

The element is cbc:TaxCurrencyCode at invoice level, beside cbc:DocumentCurrencyCode. A currencyID attribute on an amount is not this field and does not stand in for it.

Why does it happen?

Ordered from the most common to the least — your cause is most likely the first or the second.

• XML generated from a generic EN 16931 template, where BT-6 is optional. Under the KSA rules it is not, so the template passes European validation and fails here.
• A system that drops the field when the two currencies are identical, on the reasoning that repeating SAR adds nothing.
• The element emitted empty, or holding whitespace, from a mapping whose source value was null.
• Setting the currency only through the currencyID attribute on the amounts and never emitting the standalone element.

How to fix it

3 steps, then send the invoice again.

1. 1
   Emit the element, always

   cbc:TaxCurrencyCode with the value SAR, beside cbc:DocumentCurrencyCode, on every document — invoice, credit note and debit note. Write it as a constant rather than deriving it from your establishment settings: on a Saudi invoice there is nothing to derive.

2. 2
   Then carry what it obliges

   Once BT-6 is declared the tax structure has to match it: a first tax total with the breakdown in the invoice currency, and a second holding the VAT amount in SAR with no breakdown inside it. That second block is BR-KSA-EN16931-09, a warning rather than a rejection, which is why it is often the next thing you see after fixing this one.

3. 3
   If you bill in a foreign currency

   BT-5 stays the currency you invoiced in and BT-6 stays SAR, with the VAT converted for the SAR block at the rate your business uses. Two more rules watch that combination: BR-KSA-97 expects the two VAT totals to differ once the invoice currency is not SAR, and BR-KSA-88 and BR-KSA-89 expect the exchange-rate fields, where present, to name those same two currencies.

Once corrected, send the invoice again. A rejected invoice was never recorded with the Authority, so it needs no credit note — send the corrected invoice itself.

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