State tax officials, having had considerable success in persuading del

Responding to a pm:

Plan:
State has had considerable success in collecting individuals' back taxes through reduced penalties incentive.
It intends to do the same with corporations.

We need to find an assumption - something that is required to make this plan work.

A) federal tax officials will not attempt to collect back taxes in the same manner
We don't need to worry about what federal tax officials may do. It is irrelevant to our argument.

B) stiff fines are not the only way to collect past due corporate taxes
This NEEDS to be correct for our plan to work. We plan to give reduced penalties incentive i.e. we plan to reduce stiff fines. If stiff fines were the only way to collect past due corporate taxes, then our plan will fail. We have to assume that past due taxes can be collected without stiff fines too. And hence this is the answer.

C) corporations tend to be delinquent in their taxes for teh same length of time that individual taxpayers are
The length of time for which the back taxes are due has not been discussed anywhere and has no relevance to our argument. We are concerned about reducing penalties.

D) past due taxes cannot be collected without a reduction in penalties
We do not NEED this for our plan to be successful. It is not a necessary condition. Think of it this way. I have a problem A - (back taxes). I decide to solve it by using solution B (reduce stiff penalties). For my plan to succeed, is it necessary that B is the ONLY solution to A? No. There could be ten other solutions - C, D etc. I chose to use B as a solution but it needn't be the only solution for B to be successful. Hope you see why (D) is not correct.

E) penalties for delinquent corporations will have to be reduced by the same percentage as were penalties for delinquent individuals.
We don't need to assume this. We might be able to make the plan work with a smaller cut in the fines or might need to bigger cut for the corporations.

Answer (B)

Argument is simple and answer choices are simple too. We do not spend a lot of time to understand argument and answer choices as the case with long and complex argument.

However, this is hard. Unlike SUPPORTER ASSUMPTION, which can be realize when we read answer choices, DEFENDER ASSUMPTION is hard to realize and so requires us to negate each answer choice to find the defender assumption. This process of negation takes more time than the process of finding supporter assumption.

Mode to tack : for assumption question, when we finish reading 5 answer choices and see nothing, it is defender assumption question and we have to think of negation of each answer choice.

logic of CR is simple to understand the explanation. But the problem is that we find out the method of attacking for each kind of question so that we do not miss the hard questions next time. I wish you to share your ideas. I am highly interested in discussion of gmatprep questions because gmatprep is official source of hard questions.

concept of defender assumption and supporter assumption is developed in GMAT CRITICAL REASOING BIBLE. Not all of the book is good.

I want to share with you more.

For assumption, strengthening and weakening questions, the wrong answer choices which RESTATES EVIDENCE or CONTRADICTS EVIDENCE are very tricky. practice to realize these wrong answer choices is very helpfull because many trap answer choices hinge on the 2 concept. For more understanding, do searching RESTATE EVIDENCE/ CONTRADICT EVIDENCE in this forum in which I post some comment.

looking answer choices under the light of RESTATE /CONTRADICT EVIDENCE help us understand argument better.

No, it doesn't reduce the probability of success of our plan and certainly doesn't mean that the plan will not work.
If I propose plan A and you say that other plans are also possible (there are other ways of achieving the same thing), does it weaken or break my plan?
No. What will weaken my plan is if you point out a flaw in my plan, a reason why it may not work. Even if there are other ways too, that doesn't mean plan A will not work. It could be one of the things that will work.

Yes, an assumption has to bring in new information. The argument does not give you "stiff fines are not the only way to collect past due CORPORATE taxes". It is new information. We assume this, plan accordingly and hope that our plan works.

(i) is not a proper reason to reject (D). "How to collect past due taxes" is the question. (D) also talked about that only.
(D) says that the ONLY solution is reducing penalties. That needn't be true. There could be other ways too.

B) stiff fines are not the only way to collect past due corporate taxes. It strengthens the argument that the government can use another way to collect past due corporate such as reduce fines. Negating it, stiff fines are the only way to collect past due corporate taxes. It weakens the conclusion, since the plan of the government will be not effective.

Evidence: State tax officials, having had considerable success in persuading delinquent individuals to pay their back taxes through the incentive of reduced penalties.

Conclusion: Tax officials plan to apply a similar approach to collect taxes from corporations.

Since, this plan is plan is more successful than the previously used tax collection method, one can assume that there are more than one tax collection methods. Answer choice B summarizes this point well.

members, pls, discuss

it is clear that B is correct. But I want to discuss why many persons choose D. in fact, D makes me uncomfortable.

I see many questions in gmatprep, which contain answer choice like D and which makes me uncomfortable.

The test maker fully understand that he/she make us hard with D and I want to understand the way test maker make D. I want to know clue/method to realize the wrongness of D so that next time we can be easy with D.

D makes us think that negation of D weakens the argument but the negation dose not. Is this what the test maker want?

We are looking for answer choice which eliminates possible reason which could attack the argument...and the author assumes that such a possible reason does not exit.

We may use the Negation technique to examine options B and D

Option D negated - past due taxes can be collected without a reduction in penalties...this does not weaken the argument

Option B negated - stiff fines are the only way to collect past due corporate taxes....this attacks the arguments... reducing penalties will be an incentive to persuade delinquent individuals to pay taxes

Hope this helps!

Thanks Karishma, I have a small query though. Doesn't assumption have to bring in new information?
+1 Kudos for your explanation for incorrect option D. Cheers.
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Hello VeritasKarishma ma'am,

Thanks for the explanation on option D.

Could you please help me with below two queries on Option D:
i) Option D talks about in general paying back taxes -> And this option directly contradicts with the plan government used on individuals ( so it can be opted out) -> Is this proper reason to reject this answer?

ii) Officials assume that reducing penalties is SUFFICIENT for the collection of back taxes and thus there can be other SUFFICIENT conditions as well for the taxes to be paid back.

Had this option been -> payment of back corporation taxes DO NOT require any other thing than reducing penalties.
Would this bolded part qualify as assumption? I came up with this assumption while predicting an answer after reading the argument.

Regards,
Rishav

These questions usually fall under what would be called "They have a plan" questions, and the questions always almost follow the same pattern.

Someone will propose a certain course of action (here as "adopt a similar approach ") and outlines a pretty specific aim of that course of action (here "in order to collect past due taxes from corporations"). The right answer will almost always be directly related to the specific aim of the plan, which tells us that's the part of the question we should zoom in on.

We are looking for an answer that refers back to the content of the plan i.e. penalties, and corporate taxes. We are looking for a missing, unstated piece of info that tells us INDEED it is possible to reduce penalties for corporates. Only Choice B states so, citing an example of what must be true in order for the conclusion to hold true.

If stiff fines ARE the only way, then the argument about using a similar approach that's different in form but akin in principles to deal with corporates will fall apart. This is why B is the answer.

Ok, after answering D incorrectly I struggled alot to figure this out.

Here are my two cents why B and not D ( the rest are easily eliminated)

B. stiff fines are not the only way to collect past due corporate taxes.

Rule 1: find the conclusion: to collect the taxes by forgiving the fines. stiff fines are not the only way to collect taxes, therefore the tax agents can find an alternative way (which is forgiving the fines) to reach their goal (or the conclusion). This assumption fits the argument but still is not bulletproof.
to make it bulletproof: we know assumption MUST hold true or the argument will break down.
If stiff fines ARE the only way to collect taxes, then the conclusion of "collecting taxes by forgiving fines" will fall apart! because when you there is no way except stiff fines to collect taxes, how can you forgive them to hit the conclusion?


D) past due taxes cannot be collected without a reduction in penalties.

Rule 1: find the conclusion: to collect the taxes by forgiving the fines. past due taxes cannot be collected without a reduction in penalties, therefore tax agents must reduce fines to reach their goal (or the conclusion). This ALSO fits the argument but still is not bulletproof.
to make it bulletproof: we know assumption MUST hold true or the argument will break down.
If past due taxes CAN be collected without a reduction in penalties, then the conclusion of "collecting taxes by forgiving fines" WONT fall apart, because at this point it comes to the generocity of the tax agency to forgive the fines or not!

By this logic, D is eliminated.

While going through this question I noticed two boldfaced words that caught my eye, I think they play a key role here, but it is pretty blurry.

KarishmaB Ma'am,

Doesn't the negation of option D weaken the conclusion?

"Past due taxes can be collected without a reduction in penalties".
So if the past due taxes can be collected without a reduction in penalties, then the state's plan fails.
Please evaluate where am I going wrong?

Thanks

KarishmaB
Got it.
Thanks for the reply.

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