Cite as: 507 U. S. 746 (1993)
Opinion of the Court
run against WBEC to bring suit, the Government was not subrogated to "a right free of a pre-existing infirmity." Guaranty Trust, supra, at 142. That the doctrine of subrogation is one of equity only strengthens our conclusion that the Government may not proceed: The Government waited 10 years after the first notice of deficiency was issued, 8 years after the second notice was issued, and almost 6 years after the state statute of limitations ran to bring this suit.
The Government argues that affirming the Court of Appeals often will leave it "without an effective remedy to contest a tax improperly exacted from a federal contractor" and subject it to the "vagaries" of 50 state tax-law procedures. Brief for United States 26-27. But federal contractors already are subject to the substantive tax laws of the 50 States. Nothing in our decision prevents the Government from including in its contracts a requirement that its contractors be responsible for all taxes the Government believes are wrongfully assessed, a contract term that likely would remove any disinterest a contractor may have toward litigating in state court. If our decision today results in an intolerable drain on the public fisc, Congress, which can take into account the concerns of the States as well as the Federal Government, is free to address the situation. See New Mexico, 455 U. S., at 737-738.
III
In United States v. New Mexico, we held that the Federal Government is immune only from state taxes imposed on it directly. Id., at 734. In so holding, we hoped to "forestall, at least to a degree, some of the manipulation and wooden formalism that occasionally have marked tax litigation—and that have no proper place in determining the allocation of power between coexisting sovereignties." Id., at 737. Today we hold that shouldering the "entire economic burden of the levy," id., at 734, through indemnification does not give the Federal Government a federal common-law cause of action for money had and received to challenge a state tax on
759
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