Taxes

For the six months ended June 30, 2018 and 2017, we recognized a provision for income taxes of $7 million and $11 million, respectively. The following is a reconciliation of the statutory federal and state tax rates to our effective tax rate at June 30, 2018 and 2017.

Table 19.1 – Reconciliation of Statutory Tax Rate to Effective Tax Rate



	June 30, 2018		June 30, 2017
Federal statutory rate	21.0	%	34.0	%
State statutory rate, net of Federal tax effect	8.6	%	7.2	%
Differences in taxable (loss) income from GAAP income	(2.9	)%	(7.2	)%
Change in valuation allowance	(3.3	)%	(2.9	)%
Dividends paid deduction	(14.9	)%	(17.6	)%
Effective Tax Rate	8.5	%	13.5	%

The reduction of the federal statutory rate from 34% to 21% is due to the enactment of the Tax Act.

We assessed our tax positions for all open tax years (i.e., Federal, 2014 to 2018, and State, 2013 to 2018) at June 30, 2018 and December 31, 2017, and concluded that we had no uncertain tax positions that resulted in material unrecognized tax benefits.