Assessing the Financial and Income System of the Municipality of the City of Qom (2011-2013)

Municipalities, in order to provide infrastructural establishments and to harmoniously develop cities and to offer public services, require sufficient financial resources. In Iran, overdependency of municipalities, especially those of metropolises, on the income obtained from housing and construction sections, particularly from selling the permission to construct in highly congested areas, in addition to having effects on prices increase, has made a lot of financial problems and crises for municipalities over different periods. With regard to the necessity for the municipality’s involvement in providing goods and services for citizens and to the increase in expenses, what comes to the foreground is the method of providing the financial resources for the very goods and services because in keeping with the increase in urbanization, expenses increase as well; however, it is not clear whether or not the income would increase accordingly. Therefore, the municipality’s involvement in allocating and optimizing the use of urban facilities without having access to sufficient resources is impossible. The current article, utilizing analytic-descriptive method, assesses the financial and income system of the municipality of Qom both from sustainable and unsustainable income perspective. An investigation into the statistics and income resources of the city of Qom indicates that the share of sustainable income of the municipality of Qom from the total amount of income was 9 percent in 2011, 11 percent in 2012, and with a slight rise reached 14 percent in 2013. On the other hand, the share of taxes collected from construction, like issuing construction permission and fines for illegal construction and disregarding parking space, had a significant increase in 2013 comparing with the years 2011 and 2012. Therefore, careful supervision over the performance of different districts municipalities, defining profitable projects, encouraging citizens to pay tax and developing infrastructural plans are among the factors contributing to providing sustainable financial resources for the city of Qom.