What it means
The invoice can name the seller's tax representative (BG-11), the person or company the seller has appointed to account for VAT on its behalf. In UBL a postal address can carry a district or administrative area as its own element. EN 16931 has no field for it, because the address is given as address lines, city, post code, country subdivision and country. The rule fails when cac:TaxRepresentativeParty/cac:PostalAddress/cbc:District is in the file at all, even if empty.
Why it matters
EN 16931 does not use a separate district element in the tax representative's postal address (BG-12).
How to fix it
Leave the field exported as cbc:District out of the tax representative's address export. If the district is needed, add it to the second address line (BT-65). If you build the XML yourself, remove cbc:District from cac:TaxRepresentativeParty/cac:PostalAddress and, if needed, put the text in cbc:AdditionalStreetName. Recheck the exported file.
Once the file is corrected, check it again for free: Validate an invoice against EN 16931
Or fix the invoice in a form and download the corrected file, for 1 credit: Fix a rejected e-invoice
The rule as published
A UBL invoice should not include the TaxRepresentativeParty PostalAddress District Where this rule applies
| Rule set | Version |
|---|---|
| EN 16931 (UBL) | 1.3.17 |
| EN 16931 (UBL credit note) | 1.3.17 |
| XRechnung 3.0 (UBL) | 3.0.2 |
| XRechnung 3.0 (UBL credit note) | 3.0.2 |
| Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 (invoice) | 2026.5 |
| Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 (credit note) | 2026.5 |
| SI-UBL 2.0 / NLCIUS (invoice) | 2.0.3.13 |
| SI-UBL 2.0 / NLCIUS (credit note) | 2.0.3.13 |
| France CTC (UBL invoice) | 1.4.0-04 |
| France CTC (UBL credit note) | 1.4.0-04 |
| CIUS-RO UBL Invoice 1.0.9 | 1.0.9 |
| CIUS-RO UBL Credit Note 1.0.9 | 1.0.9 |
Check your file
Drop your e-invoice to see whether UBL-CR-321 still fails, and which other rules do.
Related rules
- UBL-CR-322 No time zone offset in the tax representative's address
- UBL-CR-323 No country name in the tax representative's address
- UBL-CR-324 No map coordinates in the tax representative's address
- UBL-CR-325 No physical location for the tax representative
- UBL-CR-326 No registration name in the tax representative's tax details
- UBL-CR-327 No tax level code for the tax representative