You are welcome.

Operator

Your next question comes from Jeff Klinefelter of Piper Jaffray.

Stephanie - Piper Jaffray

This is Stephanie for Jeff. I have a couple of questions. I’ll just start with the housekeeping -- the tax rate in the fourth quarter, Mike, how would you like us to think about that with the true-up year-to-date?

Michael L. Henry

You should think of it at that 35% rate for now. If it moves at all, we are not expecting it to move by more than a point or two.

Stephanie - Piper Jaffray

Okay, thanks and then just on the payroll, it came in down on a full dollar, total dollar basis. How much more can that be flexed as you go through the fourth quarter and then secondly, Sally, if you could just speak a little bit about the improvements and the initiatives in gross margin, merchandise margin specifically. Is there any ability to share some of the burden of the exit of the inventory with your brand partners or is that primarily your responsibility at this point? Thanks.

Michael L. Henry

I’ll cover the payroll question first. We are working very, very closely with our field team, our zone vice presidents, our regional directors, our DMs, store managers -- we look at this very closely every single week. We set targets and our field team has done a tremendous job of making a very significant effort at trying to keep the store payroll number down as much as we can.

We do have a significant number of stores, I would tell you, already on minimum coverage, meaning that they open with one person and they have one person in there, all the way into the very late afternoon or evening shift and then there’s two. So we have already got such a significant number of stores at this point -- it’s not a majority but it is a significant number of our stores on minimum coverage that there’s just a minimum level that you can’t go past. You have to have one person to open the store and you have to have one person there to greet your customers and help them find what they want when they come in, so store payroll is something we watch very, very closely every single week. We will continue to do that with the support of our field team and again, those guys have done a great job in helping us through this difficult period of time.

Sally Frame Kasaks

In terms of working with our suppliers and brands, we continue to work with them. We’ve worked with them on a number of fronts, including significant cancellation of products and so forth, so we work very closely with our brands and suppliers and over time we will see improvements in margin. But that’s all we can say.

Stephanie - Piper Jaffray

Okay, thanks. Good luck guys.

Operator

Your next question comes from Liz Dunn of Thomas Weisel Partners.

Liz Dunn - Thomas Weisel Partners

Hi, good afternoon. My question, first question relates to the gain on the sale. I believe last time you provided an update that was expected to be $0.23 and now you are looking for $0.11, so was the price negotiated down? And how much confidence do you have that the deal closes? I mean, is it a done deal at this point?