Investigating the sustainability of Qasemabad municipality's revenue sources in Razavi Khorasan province

For urban management in the fields of urban development and municipal services, municipalities need substantial revenue resources. To ensure the financial balance of the municipality and prevent its financial statements from being jeopardized, the municipality must rely on sustainable revenue sources (continuous, flexible, and desirable) and strive to create such sustainable revenue sources. Otherwise, if the revenues decrease significantly due to a lack of sustainability, the expenses do not decrease to the same extent, resulting in a decrease in the municipality's end-of-period profit or incurring a loss. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the sustainability of the revenue sources of the Qasemabad municipality using the Shannon entropy technique and the TOPSIS technique over a three-year period (2020-2022). The results show that the most sustainable revenue source during the study period was the share of centralized levies collected by the Ministry, value-added tax, and the sale of real estate (land), while the least sustainable was the revenue from various levies. The most important revenue sources for this municipality are value-added tax and government grants. Among these two important revenue sources, the value-added tax has high sustainability, while the government grants do not have adequate sustainability. Therefore, this municipality should seek to replace government grants with more sustainable revenue sources.