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The article focuses on benefit taxation in Colombia. The valorization tax as it exists in Colombia, particularly in Medellin, seems to have a useful but limited role to play in economic development, it is effective in financing certain specialized types of public investment at a certain stage in the economic development of a country. For the tax to be useful the country must have reached a stage where urbanization is proceeding at a rapid rate and large modern cities are being formed. The country must also have developed capable administrators, real estate men, and engineers who can handle the complicated machinery of the valorization tax. City planning must also have become feasible. Yet the country must not have yet reached the stage of maturity where capital markets have developed which can take over the job from the valorization tax and where the city has become so large and intricate that the relation between public investment and increases in site value is too complex for valorization financing to work. Colombians feel that the experience in Medellin and elsewhere in the last twenty years has established both the general principles and the specialized methods needed for successful valorization programs.