Note 10 - Income Taxes

3 Months Ended

Mar. 31, 2018

Notes to Financial Statements

Income Tax Disclosure [Text Block]

10

.     Income Taxes

For the

three

-months ended

March 31, 2018

and

2017,

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

	Three Months Ended March 31,
	2018			2017
Income tax expense	$	6,400		$	7,329
Effective income tax rate		24.3	%		41.1	%

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

21.0%

in

2018

and

35.0%

in

2017

to our effective income tax rate. For the

three

-months ended

March 31, 2018,

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

21.0%

to our effective income tax rate of

24.3%

as follows: state income taxes added

4.7%,

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

0.8%,

and discrete adjustments resulted in a reduction of

2.2%.

For the

three

-months 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%.