Note 9 - Income Taxes

9 Months Ended

Sep. 30, 2016

. Income Taxes

For the three and nine-month periods ended September 30, 2016 and 2015, our income tax expense and effective income tax rates were

as follows (dollars in thousands)

	Three Months Ended						Nine Months Ended
	September 30,						September 30,
	2016			2015			2016			2015
Income tax expense	$	797		$	4,118		$	19,109		$	16,186
Effective income tax rate		136.5	%		38.4	%		42.0	%		40.0	%

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 35.0% to our effective income tax rate. For the nine-month period ended September 30, 2016, these estimates

increased or decreased our statutory Federal income tax rate of 35.0% to our effective income tax rate of 42.0% as follows: state income taxes added 4.6%, permanent differences between our U.S. GAAP income and taxable income added 2.1%, and a discrete share-based compensation adjustment added 1.0%, while adjustments to our reserve for uncertain tax positions resulted in a reduction of 0.7%. For the nine-month period ended September 30, 2015, these estimates increased or decreased our statutory Federal income tax rate of 35.0% to our effective income tax rate of 40.0% as follows: state income taxes added 4.5% and permanent differences between our U.S. GAAP income and taxable income added 1.6%, and discrete items resulted in a reduction of 0.2

%, while adjustments to our reserve for uncertain tax positions resulted in a reduction of 0.9%.

For the three-months ended September 30, 2016,

our effective income tax rate was significantly higher than our statutory Federal income tax rate of 35.0% due primarily to the permanent differences between our taxable income and our U.S. GAAP income. These permanent differences represented a high percentage of our pre-tax U.S. GAAP income.