#1 - The government’s tax collection agency has not followed

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Weaken. The correct answer choice is (D).

Answer choice (A):

Answer choice (B):

Answer choice (C):

Answer choice (D): This is the correct answer choice.

Answer choice (E):

[paytenpar2014]

Hi, would someone please explain this one to me? I chose A, but I got down to A and D when taking the test. I'm not sure how to distinguish between the two in order to determine that D is the right answer.

Thanks!

[Poonam Agrawal]

Hi Payten!

When working on a weaken question, you want to first make sure that you have identified the main conclusion of the argument and any supporting premises offered.

Conclusion: The government's tax collection agency has not followed through on its plan to crackdown on tax violations.
Premise 1: Audits are the primary tools to detect tax violations.
Premise 2: No audit has been completed in the past year.

The next step is to identify ways to create holes in the argument - as in, you want to try and find ways to say that the government has, in fact, followed through on its plan. Here are some examples:

1. Maybe the government has other tools in its belt to crackdown on tax violations that it has already begun implementing.
2. Maybe audits have already started to be performed, but just not completed yet.
3. Maybe the crackdown plan is so lax that it does not even require audits to be performed.

Once you've pre-phrased the answer in your head, choosing between answer choice (A) and answer choice (D) becomes more straightforward. Notice that answer choice (A) does not really give us reason to doubt the original argument. Even if this plan is part of a bigger campaign against corporate misconduct, we could still easily believe that the government has not followed through on its crackdown plan.

In contrast, answer choice (D) does give us reason to doubt the original argument. If it generally takes longer than one year to complete a tax audit, then it is quite possible that the government has followed through on its crackdown plan - we just haven't seen the results yet.

[ggzinaty]

Hello. I am having some trouble wrapping my head around why B is incorrect. I understand why D is correct, but maybe I am confusing myself. Letter B states that audits in the past year were greater than audits in the previous years. Wouldn't this weaken the argument because it shows that the government HAS followed through?

[Adam Tyson]

The problem with answer B, ggzinaty, is that it is focused on the wrong group of taxpayers. The argument is about cracking down on corporations and audits of their taxes, but answer B is about personal income tax returns! Whatever is happening with personal (individuals and families) taxes has no bearing on the argument about corporate income taxes.

[g_lawyered]

Hi P.S.,
Can someone please explain to me why C is incorrect? My reasoning for choosing C is that if the audits don't reveal the violations then it makes sense why the government isn't following through with their plan of cracking down violations.... Is this answer wrong because it kind of strengthens the conclusion? Or where am I going wrong here?
Thanks in advance!

[Robert Carroll]

GGIBA003,

Even if most audits don't reveal violations, that really does nothing to weaken the case that audits are the primary tool for detecting violations. It's almost like saying "Most security guards never see a thief trying to enter a place of business. Therefore, security guards are not very useful for guarding places of business." That just doesn't make sense because it might be that thieves are pretty rare - in the stimulus, violations of corporate income tax law are rare. So most audits are not going to find violations. That's not to say that there is some other, better way to find violations - most audits don't find violations because most corporations aren't doing anything wrong. The few audits that do find violations are finding the few instances of tax fraud out there. So answer choice (C) just does not weaken the argument.

Robert Carroll

[g_lawyered]

Thanks for the response Robert,
When I was trying to predict an answer, I thought, something that would weaken would be that either: there's something else that helps crack down violations (other than audits) or that the audits they completed didn't work (so didn't crack down violations). Answer choice C matched my prediction so I chose it. I don't see how what answer choice C states: the audits not cracking down the violations (which is the primary tool to crack down the violations) DOESN'T weaken the argument? Can you please further explain?
Thanks in advance

[Robert Carroll]

GGIBA003,

Look back at my example - the fact that most security guards don't see thieves does not mean the guards aren't helping prevent theft! I'll wager that most security guards DON'T observe thieves when they do their rounds - because thieves are probably not going to be operating most of the time. Similarly, the fact that most audits don't reveal any violations says nothing at all about whether the audits are effective. Answer choice (C) says that "most" do not reveal significant violations. Not surprising - most corporations probably aren't engaging in fraud. That says nothing about the minority of cases that do reveal violations.

The fact that most audits don't reveal violations just does nothing to put a bad light on the audits. Most cars that pass police officers aren't pulled over for speeding. Most smoke alarms don't ever activate. These don't represent failures of the police officers to ticket speeders, or smoke alarms to work when there's a fire. Most situations don't trigger these measures because most situations don't have anything going wrong with them. I think you're mistakenly thinking that corporate tax fraud is rampant and that a properly-conducted audit should reveal violations in a majority of cases. That's no part of the stimulus. The success of audits is partly due to how good audits are and partly due to how much fraud is actually occurring. The fact that most audits don't reveal violations can perfectly well be explained by most situations not containing violations at all. So the audits aren't failing at anything. They're revealing the fraud that exists - a minority of cases.

Robert Carroll

[g_lawyered]

Thanks for that thorough explanation! In your explanation, you stated that answer choice C doesn't weaken the premise that "audits are the primarily tool for detecting violations". Is it safe to say, that there are different types of correct answer to a weaken question? Meaning can a correct answer choice weaken a premise of the argument? I always understood weaken question as the correct answer choice must attack/ make the conclusion LESS likely? Am I to apply the correct answer choice of a weaken question to the premises as well?
Thanks for clarifying that!