The income categories of Senator Crocker’s proposed tax code are

Question

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The income categories of Senator Crocker’s proposed tax code are  as broad as to fail to distinguish the sale of an old chair at a pawnshop from collecting profits in  a sophisticated stock option move.

A) as broad as to fail to distinguish the sale of an old chair at a pawnshop from collecting profits in

B) as broad as to fail in distinguishing between the sale of an old chair at a pawnshop and collecting profits from

C) so broad as to fail to distinguish selling an old chair at a pawnshop and collecting profits from

D) so broad as to fail to distinguish selling an old chair at a pawnshop from collecting profits in

E) so broad that he fails in distinguishing between selling chair at a pawnshop from the profits in

generis · Answer

OFFICIAL EXPLANATION

Project SC Butler: Sentence Correction (SC1) 
 For SC butler Questions  Click Here

TAKEAWAYS

• A possessive antecedent of a pronoun is not preferred. Occasionally that construction  is  allowed.  
Do not think in terms of absolutes. 
Most of the time, a subject pronoun (she, you, him) or an object pronoun (her, your, his) should not have a possessive noun as an antecedent. 
Occasionally, that setup is okay, especially when, as here, there is only one logical noun referent.

Some of you have heard of this "possessive poison" rule.
 It is not ironclad. 
Please read  this post of mine, here   ,  in which I analyze a Manhattan question modeled on an official question. 
In both questions, a possessive noun is allowed to be the antecedent of a subject pronoun.

• Idiom #1:  So X as to Y 
 Correct:   So   as to 
 Correct :  The courage of the Ukrainian people is so inspirational as to move seasoned diplomats to tears and to bring world leaders to their feet.  
 Wrong : As   as to

• Idiom #2:  distinguish 
 Correct:   to distinguish P from Q 
 Correct:   One commentator declared that it was time for decent people to distinguish good from evil—out loud and often.

Correct:   to distinguish between P and Q 
 Correct:   Even a small child can distinguish between a bully and his innocent target: why then not countries governed by grown people in a United Nations vote?

Wrong:  to distinguish between P from Q
 
I do think that you need to learn idioms; they show up in one-third of questions (or, depending on the volume, nearly one-third).
You do not need to learn 30,000. 
Please, do not even try to do so.

I would learn the top 100.
The three I listed above are in that top 100.

MAGOOSH OFFICIAL ANSWER

• Split #1: the idiom "so   as to" is correct, and the construction "as   as to" is idiomatically incorrect. 
Choices (A) & (B) are incorrect on this split, and choices (C) & (D) & (E) are correct.

• Split #2: the idiom "fail to" is correct, and the construction "fail in" is incorrect. 
Choices (B) & (E) are incorrect on this split, and choices (A) & (C) & (D) are correct.

• Split #3: there are two acceptable idioms involving the verb "distinguish": 
→ one is  to distinguish P from Q  (choices A and D have this correct); 
→ the other is  to distinguish between P and Q  (no choice has this correct). 
It is incorrect to use  distinguish between  with  from  (choices B and E) make this mistake).
It is also incorrect to use "distinguish" + "and" without the word "between" (choice C makes this mistake).

• Split #4: Parallel structure
In either of the forms of the "distinguish" idiom, the P and Q must be parallel in structure. 
Both can be gerunds, such as  selling  and  collecting  (choices C and D have this correct). 
Both can be nouns, such as  sale  and  profits —no answer choice has that construction. 
It violates parallelism to have one gerund   and one   noun — choices A, B, and E make that mistake.

• Split #5: only one choice has this issue, but notice the mystery pronoun in (E): who is the "he" mentioned in this choice? 
Senator Crocker's name appears only in the possessive, and on the GMAT,  .

The only possible answer is (D).

kungfury42 · Answer

There are two important structures that we must identify in the sentence.

Structure 1: "so X as to Y"
Structure 2: "distinguish X from Y"

We can see that only option D uses both these structures correctly and hence is our answer.

We can see that all options employ an incorrect variant of Structure 1 and can be easily eliminated, and only option that comes to close to D, is option C but we can clearly see that it employs an incorrect variant of Structure 2 and hence can also be eliminated.

Hence, option D.

Posted from my mobile device

zhanbo · Answer

My answer is  (D) . It took me 02:04. I spent quite some time checking (D) against (A).

To start with, I could not really understand what (A) means. "as broad as to fail to" is so clumsy. Yet, we cannot eliminate an answer simply because it is not to our taste.

But, I do need to understand the meaning of the sentence! When I get stuck at one option, I sometimes reverse the order of options.

(E) "so broad that he fails..." makes the meaning much clearer. 
But (E) is out because we need to use "fail to do something" rather than "fail in doing something".
Actually, "fail in doing something" is not 100% wrong. It means "in doing something, someone fails".

(D) Seems ok. Keep for now.

(C) Need to use "distinguish X  from  Y". Eliminated

(B) "Fail to" instead of "Fail in". Eliminated.

(A) Still does not like (A) but tries to find another issue to eliminate it. 
In "distinguish X from Y", X and Y should be parallel. Here, "the sale" (a noun) and "collecting profits" (a gerund) are not in perfect parallelism. In (D), "selling" and "collecting" are parallel.

winterschool · Answer

The income categories of Senator Crocker’s proposed tax code are as broad as to fail to distinguish the sale of an old chair at a pawnshop from collecting profits in a sophisticated stock option move.

A) as broad as to fail to distinguish  the sale of an old chair  at a pawnshop from collecting profits in  Incorrect

the sale of an old chair and collecting profits are not in parallel

B) as broad as to fail in distinguishing between  the sale of an old chair  at a pawnshop and collecting profits from  Incorrect

fail to - correct idioms, 
the sale of an old chair and collecting profits are not in parallel

C) so broad as to fail to distinguish selling an old chair at a pawnshop  and  collecting profits from  Incorrect

......distinguish....from..., not distinguish....and .....

D)  so broad as to fail to distinguish selling an old chair at a pawnshop from collecting profits in   Correct

E) so broad that he fails in distinguishing between selling chair at a pawnshop  from  the profits in  Incorrect

between a and b, not between a from b

generis · Answer

You can find the official explanation by clicking  here .

VerbalBot · Answer

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The income categories of Senator Crocker’s proposed tax code are

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GMAT Sentence Correction (SC - EA only) Questions

The income categories of Senator Crocker’s proposed tax code are

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