Note 9 - Income Taxes

3 Months Ended

Mar. 31, 2016

. Income Taxes

For the three-month periods ended March 31, 2016 and 2015, our income tax expense and effective income tax rates were as follows (dollars in thousands):

	Three Months Ended March 31,
	2016			2015
Income tax expense	$	6,415		$	3,940
Effective income tax rate		41.6	%		41.3	%

We estimate our differences between taxable income or loss and recorded income or loss on an annual basis. Our tax provision for each quarter is based upon these full year projections, which are revised each reporting period. These projections incorporate estimates of permanent differences between U.S. GAAP income or loss and taxable income or loss, state income taxes and adjustments to our liability for unrecognized tax benefits to adjust our statutory Federal income tax rate of 35.0% to our effective income tax rate. For the three-month period ended March 31, 2016, these estimates increased or decreased our statutory Federal income tax rate of 35.0% to our effective income tax rate of 41.6% as follows: state income taxes added 4.3%, permanent differences between our U.S. GAAP income and taxable income added 1.0%, discrete adjustments added 1.6%, and adjustments to our reserve for uncertain tax positions resulted in a reduction of 0.3%. For the three-month period ended March 31, 2015, these estimates increased or decreased our statutory Federal income tax rate of 35.0% to our effective income tax rate of 41.3% as follows: state income taxes added 4.6%, permanent differences between our U.S. GAAP income and taxable income added 1.6% and a discrete share based compensation adjustment added 1.0%, and adjustments to our reserve for uncertain tax positions resulted in a reduction of 0.9%.