This invention relates to a terminal device capable of communicating with an accounting center, an accounting system, and a data processing method. A point memory 45 of a recording/reproducing device 10 stores accounting point information. An HDD 15 stores information distributed from an external source. A CPU 11 updates the accounting point information stored in the point memory 45 and updates attributes of the distributed information when the distributed information is stored onto the HDD 15. Thus, such inconvenience that communication with a distribution/accounting center 1 is carried out every time information is distributed to the recording/reproducing device 10 is avoided.