INCOME TAXES

The following table summarizes the provision for income taxes for continuing operations (in thousands) for the three months ended March 31, and the applicable effective tax rates:



	2018			2017
Provision for income taxes	$	2,807		$	2,053
Effective tax rate	25.2		%	33.9		%

The change in the effective tax rate year over year is primarily due to the reduction in U.S. federal statutory tax rate from 35% to 21%. The effective tax rate for the three months ended March 31, 2018 was greater than the U.S. federal statutory rate of 21% due to state taxes and nondeductible permanent differences partially offset by favorable discrete items. The effective tax rate for the three months ended March 31, 2017 was less than the U.S. federal statutory rate of 35% due to net deductible permanent differences and favorable discrete items partially offset by state taxes and $0.9 million of pretax losses generated by the European residential solar racking business for which no tax benefit has been recorded as such benefit is not expected to be realizable.

On December 22, 2017, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act ("Tax Reform Act") was signed into law. On this day, the SEC staff issued Staff Accounting Bulletin No. 118 (“SAB 118”) to address the application of U.S. GAAP in situations when a registrant does not have the necessary information available, prepared, or analyzed (including computations) in reasonable detail to complete the accounting for certain income tax effects of the Tax Reform Act. The Company has recognized the provisional tax impacts related to the one-time transition tax, withholding tax and the revaluation of deferred tax assets and liabilities and included these amounts in its consolidated financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2017. As there is some uncertainty around the grandfathering provisions related to performance-based executive compensation, we have not included a provisional amount for deferred tax assets related to performance-based executive compensation as we believe that all of our plans are grandfathered. Our preliminary estimate of the one-time transition tax and the re-measurement of our deferred tax assets and liabilities is subject to the finalization of management’s analysis related to certain matters, such as developing interpretations of the provisions of the 2017 Tax Reform Act, changes to certain estimates and amounts related to the earnings and profits of certain subsidiaries and the filing of our tax returns, U.S. Treasury regulations, administrative interpretations or court decisions interpreting the 2017 Tax Reform Act may require further adjustments and changes in our estimates.

During the three month period ended March 31, 2018, the Company recognized an adjustment to the provisional amounts recorded at December 31, 2017. The following table sets forth the components of the adjustment which were recorded in income tax expense from continuing operations during three month period ended March 31, 2018, (in thousands):



Remeasurement of certain deferred tax balances (1)	114
One-time transition tax (2)	(233	)
Non-deductible performance based compensation (3)	51
Net benefit recorded to provisional income tax expense	(68	)

(1) The Company remeasured certain deferred tax assets and liabilities based on the rates at which they are expected to reverse in the future, which is generally 21%. We recorded a provisional income tax benefit of $16.2 million at December 31, 2017 related to the remeasurement of certain deferred tax balances.

(2) The Tax Reform Act provided for a one-time transition tax on post-1986 undistributed foreign subsidiary earnings and profits (“E&P”). The Company recognized a provisional $3.7 million of income tax expense at December 31, 2017 related to the one-time transition tax and related repatriation.

(3) The Tax Reform Act repealed the performance-based compensation exceptions to Section 162(m) $1.0 million deduction limitation. The Company did not provide for a provisional adjustment at December 31, 2017.

The Company has elected to account for GILTI tax in the period in which it is incurred, and therefore has not provided any deferred tax impacts of GILTI in its consolidated financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2017, or during the quarter ended March 31, 2018. We have made sufficient progress in our calculations to reasonably estimate the effect on our effective tax rate. The adjustment increased our effective tax rate by 0.6%. We will continue to refine our calculations, which may result in changes to this amount.

The final determination of the one-time transition tax and the re-measurement of our deferred assets and liabilities will be completed as additional information becomes available, but no later than one year from the enactment of the 2017 Tax Reform Act.

In January 2018, the FASB issued ASU 2018-02, Income Statement - Reporting Comprehensive Income (Topic 220): Reclassification of Certain Tax Effects from Accumulated other Comprehensive Income, which gives entities the option to reclassify retained earning tax effects resulting from Tax Reform related to items in AOCI that the FASB refers to as having been stranded in AOCI. The Company must adopt this guidance for fiscal years beginning after December 15, 2018 and interim periods within those fiscal years. Early adoption is permitted for periods for which financial statements have not yet been issued or made available for issuance, including the period Tax Reform was enacted. We elected to early adopt ASU 2018-02. As a result of adopting this standard, we reclassified $350,000 from AOCI to retained earnings.