Note 9 - Income Taxes

3 Months Ended

Mar. 31, 2017

Notes to Financial Statements

Income Tax Disclosure [Text Block]

9

.       Income Taxes

For the

three

-month periods ended

March

31,

2017

and

2016,

our income tax expense and effective income tax rates were as follows (dollars in thousands):

	Three Months Ended March 31,
	2017		2016
Income tax expense	$	7,329	$	6,415
Effective income tax rate		41.1%		41.6%

We estimate our differences between taxable income or loss and recorded income or loss on an annual basis. Our tax provision for each quarter is based upon these full year projections, which are revised each reporting period. These projections incorporate estimates of permanent differences between U.S. GAAP income or loss and taxable income or loss, state income taxes and adjustments to our liability for unrecognized tax benefits to adjust our statutory Federal income tax rate of

35.0%

to our effective income tax rate. For the

three

-month period ended

March

31,

2017,

these estimates increased or decreased our statutory Federal income tax rate of

35.0%

to our effective income tax rate of

41.1%

as follows: state income taxes added

4.4%,

permanent differences between our U.S. GAAP income and taxable income added

1.9%,

and discrete adjustments resulted in a reduction of

0.2%.

For the

three

-month period ended

March

31,

2016,

these estimates increased or decreased our statutory Federal income tax rate of

35.0%

to our effective income tax rate of

41.6%

as follows: state income taxes added

4.3%,

permanent differences between our U.S. GAAP income and taxable income added

1.0%

and a discrete share based compensation adjustment added

1.6%,

and adjustments to our reserve for uncertain tax positions resulted in a reduction of

0.3%.