The evaluation of municipalities' own revenues in the context of fiscal autonomy: The case of France and Turkey

Fiscal autonomy of local governments is one of the most important issues in local governments theories and practices. Local governments perform some public services within the scope of service distribution among administrations other than the central administration. In this context, local governments need taxes and own revenues included in these taxes in addition to the revenues transferred by the central administration for performing the services under their jurisdiction. The low or high share of own revenues in the total revenues of local governments is accepted as an important indicator in determining the level of fiscal autonomy of local governments. In this context, the subject of this study is to analyse municipalities' own revenues in France and Türkiye in terms of fiscal autonomy. The increasing prevalence of the view that services should be decentralised and provided by the units closest to the people is becoming increase the importance of local governments. On the other hand, local governments have become important units due to reasons such as ensuring efficiency in the provision of public goods and services and resource utilisation, reducing transaction costs, and producing goods and services produced in the public sector in accordance with the preferences of local people. In this respect, the importance of this study is to clarify municipalities' own revenues in total tax revenues in France and Türkiye. The ability of municipalities to fulfil the services they have undertaken is possible only if they have sufficient revenue sources These revenue sources consist of shares transferred from general budget tax revenues, municipalities' own revenues, borrowing revenues and other revenues. their demands are normally met, in other words, their desire to reduce their dependence on the central government. The aim of the study is to reveal the level of fiscal autonomy of municipalities in France and Türkiye in the context of own revenues in parallel with the tendency of thought that municipalities should be strengthened. In the study, descriptive analysis and document scanning techniques were used. The findings of the study showed that own revenues are an important indicator of fiscal autonomy. On the other hand, municipalities in France are more autonomous than municipalities in Türkiye in terms of own income and fiscal autonomy. In addition to the higher level of fiscal autonomy of municipalities in France compared to municipalities in Türkiye, budget transparency, culture of democracy and citizen satisfaction with municipal services are also found to be higher in France compared to Türkiye.