Fiscal autonomy in local governments and examine in terms of fiscal autonomy of Istanbul's district municipalities between year of 2014-2018 income budgets

Local governments are of great importance in today's world in terms of using resources more effectively and efficiently and fulfilling the provision of public services at the local level at the most appropriate level. Despite the increase in the areas of responsibility of local governments in our country, the fact that their own income, especially tax income, did not increase at the same level, but the increase in the central government income, trying to achieve the income-expenditure balance made the local governments weak in terms of both fiscal and fiscal autonomy. The aim of the thesis is to examine the meaning of the concept of fiscal autonomy in the field of local governments and to investigate whether fiscal autonomy has been implemented in the budget applications of especially district municipalities. As it known, the budget estimates of the district municipalities are included in the open sources and presented to the public, but the final account statements showing the year-end realization of the estimated budget are not included in the open sources. In this context the contribution of the thesis study is to examine and analyze the income realizations, not the income estimates in the budgets of Istanbul district municipalities for the period of 2014-2018, and to reveal the actual situation. In the study, the average own income and transfer income ratios of Istanbul district municipalities for the years 2014-2018 are %70 and %30, respectively, the average own income and transfer income ratios without capital income are %66 and %34, respectively, the average own income and transfer income ratios with only tax incomes from the own income taken into account were measured as %58 and %42, respectively. Again, income budgets of thirty-nine district municipalities of Istanbul between 2014-2018 were subjected to regression analysis using SPSS 26 program and it was examined whether the relationship between own income and sub-income items, income and own income, and expense and income is significant. It has been determined that the relationship between them is econometrically significant. Finally, the state of the own income of the municipalities and suggestions to policy makers to increase their own income were tried to be put forward.