In this study, the authors’ research included the task to calculate the direct expenses of economic entities in the collection and provision of primary statistical data. The authors developed and tested the Methodology for estimating the costs associated with gathering data, completing, calculating and verifying values of indicators of reporting forms. The authors calculated the direct budgetary and commercial organizations’ costs in the social sphere related to collecting, providing forms of reporting and expenses of the government related to collecting and aggregating. The versatility of the Methodology allows to use it also for assessing respondents’ costs related to the collection of other types of accounting information.
We share approaches on the division of private and social costs and we assessed costs of opportunism of economic agents in the collection and provision of official statistical information, using the authors’ method of collecting and analyzing the respondents’ opinions on the Internet.
The authors propose a new approach to estimating information costs in value terms.