Rule at a Glance
| ID | Severity | Context (XPath) |
|---|---|---|
| Series ref. BR-111 | Schematron ID: ibr-011-ae | Fatal (error) | cac:AccountingCustomerParty/cac:Party/cac:PartyLegalEntity/cbc:CompanyID[@schemeAgencyID='PAS']/@schemeAgencyName |
Assert text: [ibr-011-ae]-Passport issuing country code (BTAE-19) MUST be coded using ISO code list 3166-1.
Test: two-letter ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 membership test against the full country list
Classification
Master Data / Code List.
What the Rule Is Checking
Where a buyer is identified by passport rather than a UAE tax registration — a tourist refund scenario, or a customer without a CT TIN — the passport's issuing country (BTAE-19) has to be a valid two-letter ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code. The rule checks the value against the full published list; anything outside it, including a three-letter code or a country name, fails.
Why This Rule Exists
Passport-based buyer identification exists precisely because a UAE Corporate Tax TIN isn't always available, and the issuing country is what lets the authority and the seller's own systems disambiguate a buyer identity that otherwise carries no domestic registration number. A malformed or invented country code breaks that disambiguation silently — the invoice validates as structurally complete while the identity behind it is unverifiable.
UAE Data Example
PASSES ✓
<cbc:SchemeAgencyName>AE</cbc:SchemeAgencyName>FAILS ✗
<cbc:SchemeAgencyName>UAE</cbc:SchemeAgencyName>A three-letter code such as UAE is the most common failure here, because it's the form most UAE staff reach for by habit — the mandated code list is the two-letter alpha-2 set, not alpha-3.
What Your ERP / IT Team Must Ensure
- Confirm the source system for passport data stores or can derive the two-letter alpha-2 country code, not the three-letter alpha-3 form many identity documents display.
- Build the mapping against the published ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 list rather than a hand-maintained subset, since the valid set spans nearly every jurisdiction, not just GCC and major trading partners.
- Apply the same alpha-2 check to the mirror rule ibr-013-ae, which governs the supplier-side passport country field with an identical code list.
- Flag passport-identified buyer records for review where the country field is blank or free text, since this scenario typically enters the ERP through manual capture rather than system-to-system integration.