Twenty professional income-tax

Answer choices

1. A

   Too Strong: any7% picked this

   Only one out of every twenty income-tax returns prepared by any given professional income-tax advisor

   Even though in this one experiment with these twenty random pro tax preparers, only 1 out of 20 were correct, we can't definitively prove that this exact ratio will hold for every single professional tax advisor's work. This answer is making an insanely strong claim that applies to every single pro tax advisor in the world. Also, it's worth noting that this has switched from the contents of the paragraph (1 out of 20 preparers got the return correct) to some distorted version (1 out of 20 returns that a professional prepares will be correct).

   7%
2. B

   Correct89% picked this

   The fact that a tax return has been prepared by a professional income-tax advisor provides no guarantee that the tax

   Why this is right

   Just as we were scared by the crazy extreme strength of (A)'s wording (it would be really hard to prove that something is true about every single pro tax preparer in the world), we're really enticed to see the weak strength of the wording here. The burden of proof is very low when we say, "The fact that X is true provides no guarantee that Y is true". Consider the claim, "The fact that someone scores a 175 on their LSAT provides no guarantee that they'll get into UCLA." How much information would you need to prove that claim is true? Just one data point. Jill got a 175 and didn't get into UCLA. That proves that a 175 doesn't guarantee acceptance. So to prove this answer choice is a true claim, we just need at least one data point in which "a tax return has been prepared by a professional, but the tax return has not been correctly prepared". Do we have any such data points? Heck, yeah! We've got 19 of those sorry data points. This answer is rewarding one of the inferences we made (19 of them were technically incorrect). It's just finding a nauseatingly-LSAT way of presenting that idea.

   Skill tested: Must be True · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

   89%
3. C

   Too Strong: necessary Opposite, if anything1% picked this

   In order to insure that tax returns are correct, it is necessary to hire professional income-tax

   This answer boldly says that anyone who isn't a professional will have incorrect tax returns 100% of the time. Wow. Couldn't a non-professional get a really easy tax return correct some of the time? It's really necessary to hire a professional? Beyond the over the top strength of this claim, we actually have 19 examples of professionals who prepared this tax return incorrectly, so this paragraph wasn't exactly a vote of confidence for professional tax prep people.

   1%
4. D

   Too Strong: all3% picked this

   All professional income-tax advisors make mistakes on at least some of the tax

   Even though this is surely a must be true in real life (who among us is perfect at our jobs), there is no support for this in the passage. We only heard about 20 tax advisors. We can't assume anything about all professional tax advisors on the basis of 20 of them.

   3%
5. E

   Out of Scope1% picked this

   People are more likely to have an incorrectly prepared tax return if they prepare their own tax returns than if they

   Out of Scope: prepare their own Unsupported Comparison We don't have any information at all on what happens when people prepare their own tax returns, so there's no way we could prove this sort of comparison.

   1%