Methodology for a comparison between intermediate costs from tax-source and from national accounting

This paper deals with the possibilities of reconciliation that might be done between intermediate consumption calculated from business tax return and data from national accounts. This study has been carried out both in France, based on data from direct taxes, and in Italy, based on data from VAT (value added taxes). Many issues raised by the comparison of intermediate consumption of various activities in both approaches are here examined in a quite detailed manner. The potential interest of this study is double. On the one hand, it lights up the possibilities of using tax-source in order to evaluate intermediate consumption in national accounts. From this point of view, it allows to focus on some difficulties that may contribute to adjust further work. On the other hand, the issue of gaps analysis as regards business overstatement of their costs is considered. At a sufficient aggregated level, intermediate consumption from tax-source proved to be quite systematically higher than the one obtained from national accounts statistics. But results must be analysed very cautiously because methological difficulties and data processing are important, especially in the french case.