Foreign companies generate more and more international trade through their non-active VAT registrations but these firms do own Hungarian tax numbers. Although these specialpurpose firms are present in various fields of economy e.g. storage, re-export, etc. their most important function is their involvement in global manufacturing. Because of their special legal status following the actions of VAT registrations in international trade statistics and in GDP compilations leads to diverse results, which causes significant difference in the data of these fields. The detachment of the product flow, the change of ownership and the money flow that is experienced today also makes it hard to follow the economical processes. Because of the above mentioned changes one of the most important methodological tasks for statisticians became to measure the activity of the VAT registrations and to ensure the consistency of data at national and an international level. We are demonstrating these complex transactions in three case studies at the end of our article.

Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) codes: F10, F23