Intermediate goods or services used in production can be either changed in form (e.g. bulk sugar) or completely used up (e.g. electric power).
Taxes Some goods and services bought by enterprises do not enter directly into production of output itself, but are consumed by workers (e.g. work clothing, accommodation, meals, transport, washrooms, medical check-ups).
In such cases it is necessary to distinguish whether items are intermediate consumption or, alternatively, a remuneration "in kind" to employees (for example, fringe benefits such as company cars and meal tickets for private use).
Likewise, rentals paid by a business on buildings or equipment under an operating lease are recorded in national accounts as intermediate consumption, and are excluded from its value-added.
In UNSNA, a distinction is drawn between property incomes and the rentals receivable and payable under operating leases by producing enterprises.
The assets loaned, rented or leased are regarded as not being produced in this case, and no capital consumption is considered to be incurred in respect of their use.
On the other side, having been included in intermediate consumption, the property incomes payable by enterprises that borrow funds or rent land or subsoil assets do not enter into the calculation of their value added, or operating surpluses, at all.
In Marxian economics, net rents paid out of the current gross income of producing enterprises are not regarded as intermediate expenditure, but as part of the value product.
Hence, the eternal dispute, for instance in railroading, whether certain expenses are for repairs or for replacement, whether they must be defrayed from current expenditures or from the original stock.