7.	Income Taxes

On December 22, 2017, the President signed into law H.R.1 (P.L. 115-97), originally known as the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” (the “Tax Act”). The Tax Act significantly revises the U.S. tax code by, among other items, reducing the federal corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, providing for the full expensing of certain depreciable property, eliminating the corporate alternative minimum tax, limiting the deductibility of interest expense, further limiting the deductibility of certain executive compensation, limiting the use of net operating loss carryforwards created in tax years beginning after December 31, 2017, and implementing a territorial tax system imposing a deemed repatriation transition tax (“Transition Tax”) on earnings of foreign subsidiaries.

The SEC staff issued Staff Accounting Bulletin (“SAB”) 118, Income Tax Accounting Implications of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which provides guidance on accounting for the effects and includes a measurement period that ends when a company has obtained, prepared, and analyzed the information necessary to finalize its accounting of the Tax Act, which cannot extend beyond one year. In accordance with SAB 118, the Company recorded provisional estimates of the income tax effects of the Tax Act in the 2017 Form 10-K.

During the three and nine months ended September 30, 2018, we have recorded an immaterial favorable adjustment for the Transition Tax originally recorded with the measurement period provisional estimates at December 31, 2017. We expect to record our final adjustment for the income tax effects of the Tax Act after the completion and filing of our 2017 federal and state income tax returns during the fourth quarter and before the SAB 118 measurement period ends. We estimate this final adjustment, primarily from favorable timing item differences, to also be immaterial.

For the three months ended September 30, 2018 and 2017, we recorded $67.4 million and $77.8 million of income tax expense and had an effective tax rate of 24.6% and 35.9%, respectively. For the nine months ended September 30, 2018 and 2017, we recorded $172.6 million and $204.9 million of income tax expense and had an effective tax rate of 24.4% and 33.9%, respectively. The decrease in our effective tax rate for both the three and nine months ended September 30, 2018 compared with the same periods in 2017 was primarily due to the Tax Act (P.L. 115-97), which included a reduction in the federal tax rate of 14.0% offset by the loss of the Domestic Production Activities Deduction benefit of about 3.2% and a reduction in the federal benefit of state tax deductions of about 0.8%, as well as an internal legal entity consolidation that took place in the third quarter of 2017, partially offset by lower excess tax benefits from employee share-based payment awards under ASU 2016-09 in 2018 compared to the same periods in 2017.

Our effective tax rate may differ from the federal statutory income tax rate of 21.0% due primarily to the effect of state and local income taxes. During the nine months ended September 30, 2018 and 2017, cash paid for taxes, net of refunds received, was $73.2 million and $208.3 million, respectively. The decrease in cash tax payments between the periods is due to the lower statutory tax rate and a federal overpayment carryforward from the 2017 tax year into the 2018 tax year as a result of Tax Act related changes.

During the three and nine months ended September 30, 2018, there were no significant changes to our uncertain tax positions. For more information, see Note 6, Income Taxes, of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements in “Part II, Item 8. Financial Statements and Supplementary Data” of our 2017 Annual Report on Form 10-K.