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:



	Three Months Ended March 31,
	2019			2018
Provision for income taxes	$	1,571		$	2,807
Effective tax rate	19.8		%	25.2		%

The effective tax rate for the three months ended March 31, 2019 was less than the U.S. federal statutory rate of 21% due to favorable discrete items partially offset by state taxes and nondeductible permanent differences. 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.

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 was finalized in the fourth quarter of 2018.

While the Tax Reform Act provides for a territorial tax system, beginning in 2018, it included two new U.S. tax base erosion provisions, the global intangible low-taxed income (“GILTI”) provisions and the base-erosion and anti-abuse tax (“BEAT”) provisions.

The GILTI provisions require the Company to include in its U.S. income tax return any foreign subsidiary earnings in excess of an allowable return on the foreign subsidiary’s tangible assets. 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 three months ended March 31, 2019 and March 31, 2018.

The BEAT provisions in the Tax Reform Act eliminate the deduction of certain base-erosion payments made to related foreign corporations, and impose a minimum tax if greater than regular tax. The BEAT tax had no impact on the Company's consolidated financial statements for the three months ended March 31, 2019 and March 31, 2018.

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 on January 1, 2018.