Through the calculation of the matrix element of the singlet axial-current operator between the vacuum and a pair of gluons in dimensional regularization with an anti-commuting γ5 defined in a Kreimer-scheme variant, we find that additional renormalization counter-terms proportional to the Chern-Simons current operator are needed starting from O\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$ \\mathcal{O} $$\\end{document}(αs2\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$ {\\alpha}_s^2 $$\\end{document}) in QCD. This is in contrast to the well-known purely multiplicative renormalization of the singlet axial-current operator defined with a non-anticommuting γ5. Consequently, without introducing compensation terms in the form of additional renormalization, the Adler-Bell-Jackiw anomaly equation does not hold automatically in the bare form in this kind of schemes. We determine the corresponding (gauge-dependent) coefficient to O\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$ \\mathcal{O} $$\\end{document}(αs3\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$ {\\alpha}_s^3 $$\\end{document}) in QCD, using a variant of the original Kreimer prescription which is implemented in our computation in terms of the standard cyclic trace together with a constructively-defined γ5. Owing to the factorized form of these divergences, intimately related to the axial anomaly, we further performed a check, using concrete examples, that with γ5 treated in this way, the axial-current operator needs no more additional renormalization in dimensional regularization but only for non-anomalous amplitudes in a perturbatively renormalizable theory. To be complete, we provide a few additional ingredients needed for a proposed extension of the algorithmic procedure formulated in the above analysis to potential applications to a renormalizable anomaly-free chiral gauge theory, i.e. the electroweak theory.