June 17, 2015
On July 30, the Bureau of Economic Analysis will release its annual update of the national income and product accounts (NIPAs) in conjunction with the advance estimate for the second quarter of 2015. As is usual for annual NIPA revisions, the revised estimates will incorporate newly available source data that are more complete, more detailed, and otherwise more reliable than those that were previously incorporated.
This year’s annual revision will introduce the following:
- An improved treatment of federal refundable tax credits in the personal income and outlays account and the government receipts and expenditures account.
- Two new aggregates—the average of gross domestic product (GDP) and gross domestic income (GDI) and final sales to private domestic purchasers—that will facilitate the analysis of macroeconomic trends.
- Improvements to the seasonal adjustment of GDP components, including federal defense spending on services, and of the source data underlying several other NIPA components.
- An expanded presentation of payments and receipts of transfers and taxes between the United States and the “rest of world” that will harmonize the NIPA presentation of these transactions with the presentation in BEA’s international transactions accounts (ITAs).
- An improved presentation of exports and imports that provides detail on exports of petroleum and products that will align the NIPA presentation of trade in industrial supplies and materials with the presentation in the ITAs.
Read the entire article in the June Survey of Current Business.