Intergovernmental grants are not available to all federations. In this paper, optimal federal tax policies in a multileveled government framework are studied, when the federal authority has no access to intergovernmental grants, and the state governments implement the residence principle. A vertical fiscal externality exists. The federal government, using the available tax instruments, has a dual role; it corrects the inefficiences that arise from the non-cooperative behaviour of the state governments and also redistributes income. It is shown that there may exist a conflict in the redistributional considerations of the federal government and the achievement of production efficiency between the federation and the rest of the world.
