Income Taxes

The effective tax rates on net income from continuing operations were 165.5% and (4.8)% for the three and six months ended June 30, 2018, respectively. The effective tax rates on net income from continuing operations were 76.9% and (181.0)% for the three and six months ended June 30, 2017, respectively. For the three months ended June 30, 2018, the Company reported a tax benefit of $144 million on a pretax loss of $87 million, which resulted in an effective tax rate of 165.5%. For the six months ended June 30, 2018, the Company reported a tax benefit of $30 million on pretax income of $631 million, which resulted in an effective tax rate of (4.8)%. The primary drivers of the tax rates for the three and six months ended June 30, 2018 include the following:


•	The geographical distribution of income including restructuring charges and legacy litigation as well as the impairment of certain assets and liabilities classified as held for sale.

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Certain discrete items including the net tax benefit associated with the anticipated sale of certain assets and liabilities classified as held for sale, the impact of share-based payments, changes in uncertain tax positions, and the deferred remeasurement related to the anticipated acceleration of contributions to the qualified U.S. pension plan. The deferred remeasurement also impacted the Company’s provisional estimates.

On December 22, 2017, the Tax Reform Act was enacted into law and the new legislation contains several key tax provisions that impact the Company, including a reduction of the corporate income tax rate to 21% effective for tax years beginning after December 31, 2017 and a one-time mandatory transition tax on accumulated foreign earnings (the “Transition Tax”), among others. Also on December 22, 2017, the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) staff issued Staff Accounting Bulletin No. 118 (“SAB 118”) to address the application of U.S. GAAP in situations when a registrant did not have the necessary information available, prepared, or analyzed in reasonable detail to complete the accounting for certain income tax effects of Tax Reform Act in the period of enactment. SAB 118 allowed registrants to record provisional amounts during a one year measurement period.

In the fourth quarter of 2017, a net provisional charge of $345 million was recorded which included the Transition Tax, the re-measurement of existing deferred tax balances, as well as local country income taxes, state income taxes and withholding taxes expected to be due upon repatriation of the earnings subject to the Transition Tax. In addition, the Company was unable to estimate the allocation between continuing and discontinued operations of the tax benefit from foreign tax credits generated in 2017 and related valuation allowance release.

In the second quarter of 2018, the Company took the following actions with respect to its provisional estimates:


•	Adjusted its provisional estimate of the remeasurement of deferred taxes to reflect the anticipated acceleration of contributions to the qualified U.S. pension plan in the third quarter of 2018. The change reduced the provisional charge by $11 million and impacted the effective tax rate by 12.6% and (1.7)% for the three and six months ended June 30, 2018, respectively.


•	Updated its state tax analysis to consider legislation enacted by the states in the second quarter, which did not result in a significant adjustment.


•	Continued to update the underlying calculations for the Transition Tax but did not record any significant adjustments. Additional guidance from the U.S. Treasury related to the calculation of the Transition Tax is expected in the third quarter of 2018.

The Company will finalize the amounts by the end of 2018 after completing its reviews, analyzing guidance issued during the measurement period, and evaluating the local tax rules where the Company has pools of undistributed earnings within our complex legal entity structure.