INCOME TAXES

The following table summarizes the provision for income taxes for continuing operations (in thousands) for the three and nine months ended September 30, and the applicable effective tax rates:



	Three Months Ended September 30,						Nine Months Ended September 30,
	2018			2017			2018			2017
Provision for income taxes	$	6,473		$	11,184		$	15,574		$	21,090
Effective tax rate	24.9		%	35.2		%	23.5		%	35.8		%

The change in the effective tax rate year over year is primarily due to the reduction in the U.S. federal statutory tax rate from 35% to 21%. The effective tax rate for the three and nine months ended September 30, 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, including a $2.6 million tax benefit related to performance share unit vesting. The effective tax rate for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2017 was greater than the U.S. federal statutory rate of 35% due to state taxes and $2.2 million of pretax losses generated by the European residential solar racking business for which no tax benefit had been recorded as such benefit is not expected to be realizable, partially offset by net deductible permanent differences and favorable discrete items.

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 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. 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 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 Tax Reform Act may require further adjustments and changes in our estimates.

During the nine month period ended September 30, 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 nine month period ended September 30, 2018, (in thousands):



Remeasurement of certain deferred tax balances (1)	174
One-time transition tax (1)	(363	)
Non-deductible performance based compensation (2)	366
Net adjustment recorded to provisional income tax expense	177

(1) Provisional amounts primarily related to return to provision adjustments.

(2) Provisional amounts primarily related to further guidance of Notice 2018-68 (guidance on performance-based compensation issued in the third quarter).

The Company has elected to account for global intangible low-taxed income ("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 three and nine months ended September 30, 2018. As a result of proposed regulations issued in the third quarter of 2018, the impact of GILTI on our current annual effective tax decreased the impact on the effective rate from 0.6% to 0.3%. If future guidance differs from our interpretations, this amount may change.

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 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.