Income Tax Matters

3 Months Ended

Mar. 31, 2016

The provision for (benefit from) incomes taxes for each period presented consisted of the following (in millions of dollars):



	Quarter Ended
	March 31,
	2016		2015
Domestic	$	14.9	$	(175.8	)
Foreign	0.2		—
Total	$	15.1	$	(175.8	)

The income tax provision (benefit) for the quarters ended March 31, 2016 and March 31, 2015 was $15.1 million and $(175.8) million, reflecting an effective tax rate of 36.5% and 37.6%, respectively. The difference between the effective tax rate and the projected blended statutory tax rate for the quarter ended March 31, 2016 was due to (i) a decrease of $0.7 million for the recognition of excess tax benefits from stock compensation, resulting in a 1.7% decrease to the blended statutory tax rate, which was partially offset by (ii) an increase of $0.3 million to the valuation allowance for certain state net operating losses, resulting in a 0.7% increase to the blended statutory tax rate. There was no material difference between the effective tax rate and the projected blended statutory tax rate for the quarter ended March 31, 2015.

The $175.8 million income tax benefit for the quarter ended March 31, 2015 included a $184.4 million tax benefit that was recorded as a result of removing the Union VEBA net assets and related deferred tax liabilities from our consolidated financial statements. See Note 5 for disclosure regarding employee benefits.

Our gross unrecognized benefits relating to uncertain tax positions were $1.7 million at March 31, 2016 and December 31, 2015, respectively, of which, $0.6 million would be recorded through our income tax provision and thus impact the effective tax rate at March 31, 2016 and December 31, 2015, respectively, if the gross unrecognized tax benefits were to be recognized.

We do not expect our gross unrecognized tax benefits to significantly change within the next 12 months.

ASU No. 2016-09, Compensation - Stock Compensation (Topic 718): Improvements to Employee Share-Based Payment Accounting, was issued and early adopted in March 2016. ASU 2016-09 eliminates additional paid in capital ("APIC") pools and requires excess tax benefits and tax deficiencies to be recorded in the income statement when the awards vest or are settled. In addition, modified retrospective adoption of ASC 2016-09 eliminates the requirement that excess tax benefits be realized (i.e., through a reduction in income taxes payable) before we can recognize them and therefore, we have recorded a cumulative-effect adjustment of $0.7 million through Retained earnings and Deferred tax assets – net during the quarter ended March 31, 2016 to record excess tax benefits not previously recognized.