diff --git a/src/libfetchers/tarball.cc b/src/libfetchers/tarball.cc
index 69ed53f79..8236c5ea1 100644
--- a/src/libfetchers/tarball.cc
+++ b/src/libfetchers/tarball.cc
@@ -43,7 +43,7 @@ DownloadFileResult downloadFile(
     FileTransferRequest request(url);
     request.headers = headers;
     if (cached)
-        request.expectedETag = getStrAttr(cached->infoAttrs, "etag");
+        request.headers.emplace_back("If-None-Match", getStrAttr(cached->infoAttrs, "etag"));
     FileTransferResult res;
     try {
         res = getFileTransfer()->enqueueDownload(request).get();
diff --git a/src/libstore/filetransfer.cc b/src/libstore/filetransfer.cc
index fc1353349..11f369efd 100644
--- a/src/libstore/filetransfer.cc
+++ b/src/libstore/filetransfer.cc
@@ -111,8 +111,6 @@ struct curlFileTransfer : public FileTransfer
             , dataCallback(std::move(dataCallback))
         {
             requestHeaders = curl_slist_append(requestHeaders, "Accept-Encoding: zstd, br, gzip, deflate, bzip2, xz");
-            if (!request.expectedETag.empty())
-                requestHeaders = curl_slist_append(requestHeaders, ("If-None-Match: " + request.expectedETag).c_str());
             for (auto it = request.headers.begin(); it != request.headers.end(); ++it){
                 requestHeaders = curl_slist_append(requestHeaders, fmt("%s: %s", it->first, it->second).c_str());
             }
diff --git a/src/libstore/filetransfer.hh b/src/libstore/filetransfer.hh
index ed22578a2..09f7d5c7f 100644
--- a/src/libstore/filetransfer.hh
+++ b/src/libstore/filetransfer.hh
@@ -56,7 +56,6 @@ struct FileTransferRequest
 {
     std::string uri;
     Headers headers;
-    std::string expectedETag;
 
     FileTransferRequest(std::string_view uri)
         : uri(uri) { }