On December 22, 2017, the U.S. government enacted comprehensive tax legislation commonly referred to as the 2017 Tax Act. The 2017 Tax Act makes broad and complex changes to the U.S. tax code that affected the Company’s fiscal year ended September 30, 2018, by measures including but not limited to, i) reducing the U.S. federal corporate tax rate and ii) bonus depreciation that allows for full expensing of qualified property. The 2017 Tax Act reduced the Company’s federal tax rate to 21% in the fiscal year ended September 30, 2018. Section 15 of the Internal Revenue Code stipulated that the Company’s fiscal year ended September 30, 2018 had blended corporate tax rate of 24.5%, which is based on the applicable tax rates before and after the 2017 Tax Act and the number of days in the year.

As a result of the reduction in the U.S. corporate income tax rate from 35% to 21% under the 2017 Tax Act, the Company revaluated its ending next deferred tax liabilities at December 31, 2017 and recognized a $41,367 tax benefit in the Company’s consolidated statement of operations for the six months ended March 31, 2018.

The following table summarizes the Company’s income tax benefit and effective income tax rate for the three and six months ended March 31, 2019 and 2018.

	Three Months Ended March 31,						Six Months Ended March 31,
	2019			2018			2019			2018
Loss before income taxes	$	(4,921	)	$	(29,922	)	$	(16,884	)	$	(62,137	)
Income tax (benefit)		(1,315	)		(7,858	)		(4,451	)		(59,397	)
Effective income tax rate		26.7	%		26.3	%		26.4	%		95.6	%

The increase in the effective tax rate for the three months ended March 31, 2019 when compared to the three months ended March 31, 2018, is primarily related to the decrease in the loss before income tax as well as the reduction in the statutory rate in 2019 as a result of the 2017 Tax Act.

The lower effective tax rate for the six months ended March 31, 2019, when compared to the six months ended March 31, 2018, was primarily due to the one-time favorable impact of the deferred tax liability revaluation in the 2018 period as a result of the 2017 Tax Act. The effective tax rate excluding the revaluation of deferred taxes was 29.0% for the six months ended March 31, 2018.