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Income Taxes
9 Months Ended
Sep. 30, 2018
Income Tax Disclosure [Abstract]  
Income Taxes
Income Taxes
 
On December 22, 2017, the U.S. Congress enacted the law known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (Tax Reform Legislation), which made significant changes to U.S. federal income tax law, including lowering the federal corporate tax rate to 21% from 35% beginning January 1, 2018. The Company is still analyzing certain aspects of the Tax Reform Legislation and refining calculations, which could potentially impact the measurement of deferred tax balances or potentially give rise to new deferred tax amounts. The Company will refine its estimates to incorporate new or better information as it comes available through the filing date of its 2017 U.S. income tax returns in the fourth quarter of 2018.

For the nine months ended September 30, 2018 and 2017, the Company calculated the provision for income taxes by applying the annual effective tax rate for the full fiscal year to “ordinary” income or loss (pre-tax income or loss excluding unusual or infrequently occurring items) for the quarter.

All of EQGP's, RMP’s and Strike Force Midstream’s income is included in the Company's pre-tax income (loss). However, the Company is not required to record income tax expense on income allocated to the noncontrolling public limited partners of EQGP and EQM, or to the noncontrolling public limited partners of RMP prior to the Midstream Mergers or to the portion of Strike Force Midstream’s income allocated to the minority owner prior to the closing of the Gulfport Transaction. The exclusion of this income is allocated to noncontrolling interest from the Company's taxable income which reduces the Company's effective tax rate in periods when the Company has consolidated pre-tax income and increases the Company's effective tax rate in periods when the Company has consolidated pre-tax loss.

The Company recorded income tax benefit at an effective tax rate of 28.8% for the nine months ended September 30, 2018 and income tax expense at an effective tax rate of 19.9% for the nine months ended September 30, 2017. The Company’s forecasted annual effective tax rate for 2018 was higher than the statutory rate due to the impact of income allocated to non-controlling limited partners on a forecasted consolidated pre-tax loss and the impact of state taxes. The state taxes increased the forecasted annual effective tax rate as compared to the statutory rate as a result of the pre-tax loss on entities with higher state applicable rates and pre-tax income on entities with lower state applicable rates. The Company’s effective tax rate for the nine months ended September 30, 2018 was lower because the amount of benefit recorded for the year-to-date is limited to the amount of benefit forecasted for the entire year.

There were no material changes to the Company’s methodology for determining unrecognized tax benefits during the three months ended September 30, 2018.