Critically appraising the recommendations of the Thirteenth Finance Commission, this paper points out that despite some tinkering with one of the indicators, its approach to tax devolution suffers from the same limitations as those of earlier commissions. More alarmingly, the inability to offset the fiscal disabilities of the states has led it to recommend as many as 12 different types of grants with a host of conditionalities. There are serious questions over the design and implementation of these conditions, in addition to monitoring compliance. Besides, the commission’s recommendations on the goods and services tax have been resented by the states and this has actually taken the reform agenda backwards. All this lends weight to the suspicion that yet another opportunity to reform the transfer system has been lost.