Note 20. Taxes

For the six months ended June 30, 2014 and 2013, we recognized a benefit for income taxes of $2 million and a provision of $14 million, respectively. The following is a reconciliation of the statutory federal and state tax rates to our projected annual effective rate at June 30, 2014 and 2013.

Reconciliation of Statutory Tax Rate to Effective Tax Rate


	June 30, 2014		June 30, 2013
Federal statutory rate		34.0 %		34.0 %
State statutory rate, net of Federal tax effect		7.2 %		7.2 %
Differences in taxable (loss) income from GAAP income		(2.5) %		(8.3) %
Change in valuation allowance		1.2 %		(12.2) %
Dividends paid deduction		(45.5) %		(10.7) %

Effective Tax Rate		(5.6) %		10.0 %

The negative effective tax rate for the six months ended June 30, 2014, primarily resulted from a benefit from income taxes recorded against a GAAP loss generated at our taxable REIT subsidiaries, while GAAP income generated at the REIT, for which no material tax provision was recorded due to the dividends paid deduction available to us, exceeded the loss at the taxable REIT subsidiaries.

We assessed our tax positions for all open tax years (Federal — years 2010 to 2014, State — years 2009 to 2014) and, at June 30, 2014 and December 31, 2013, concluded that we had no uncertain tax positions that resulted in material unrecognized tax benefits.