Income Taxes (Notes)

9 Months Ended

Sep. 30, 2017

Income Tax Disclosure [Abstract]

INCOME TAXES

INCOME TAXES

For interim tax reporting, we estimate one single effective tax rate for tax jurisdictions not subject to a valuation allowance, which is applied to the year-to-date ordinary income/(loss). Tax effects of significant unusual or infrequently occurring items are excluded from the estimated annual effective tax rate calculation and recognized in the interim period in which they occur.

For the third quarter and first nine months of 2017, our effective tax rates were 10.6% and 16.7%, respectively. During the third quarter and first nine months of 2017 we recognized $266 million and $687 million of benefit for foreign tax credits expected to be realized in the foreseeable future. The tax benefit relates to investments in certain non-U.S. subsidiaries previously determined to be indefinitely reinvested in operations outside the United States. Our change in assertion for these investments is related to planned distributions in anticipation of potential U.S. corporate tax reform.