On consistent determination of α_s from jet rates in deep inelastic scattering

For theoretically consistent determination of $\alpha_s$ from jet rates in deep inelastic scattering the dependence on $\alpha_s$ of parton distribution functions is in principle as important as that of hard scattering cross--sections. For the kinematical region accessible at HERA we investigate in detail numerical importance of these two sources of the $\alpha_s$ dependence of jet rates.