Contrastive Study of Income Resources and Financing of Tehran municipality and Some Other Important Cities of the World

One of the most important issues in the municipalities, across the globe, is providing sufficient income resources for financing the urban services. In Iran, the over dependency of many municipalities, especially that of Tehran, on such an unsustainable income resource as the housing section, in addition to its effect on the increase in the housing prices, has made the municipality face financial problems at different periods of time. A study on income resources and the income of the municipalities of the world cities and also utilizing the experiences of those which have a structure the same as that of Tehran may help solve the problems of the municipality. In this research, the method of investigation was descriptive and contrastive and the purpose was making a comparison between the financial and income resources of Tehran and the most important cities of the world which have the governing system similar to that of Tehran. The results showed that the main income resources of the municipalities of the world cities are the direct selling of the services (via receiving the price of urban services), collecting taxes and duties, utilizing the financial supports of the government (governmental money transfers), obtaining loans, and issuing urban bonds (utilizing financial markets as a complement to income system). The results also showed that the main income resource of the large cities is receiving the tax and duty from the citizens and one of the most sustainable tax resources is the tax on assets. Therefore, based on the comparative studies, the increase in the income from urban taxes, the selling of services, governmental transfers (the transfer of a part of national tax to the municipality), and to some extent the increase in financial supports by the government are argued to be the best income resources for the municipality of Tehran.