#17 - The average tax refund received by taxpayers who use tax preparation services

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Parallel Flaw. The correct answer choice is (A).

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

Answer choice (B):

Answer choice (C):

Answer choice (D):

Answer choice (E):

This explanation is still in progress. Please post any questions below!

[katnyc]

Hi there, while I understand answer choice A is the best and looks the closest to the problem. I cannot remove B too confidently. Would someone please explain the flaw approach here?

[Robert Carroll]

katnyc,

The flaw in the stimulus is that correlation does not prove causation. The premises of the stimulus and answer choice (A) establish a correlation between two things, and the conclusion assumes there is a casual connection between the two. Answer choice (B) already includes causation in the premises - it says that a print shop "enables" companies to be more efficient. That's already causal language. Thus, answer choice (B) will not have the same flaw as the stimulus.

Robert Carroll

[TotalGoal]

Hi, on this one I had thought that the "flaw" was the arguments' failure to consider the cost of the Tax Prep service. If someone could get a $1000 tax return on their own, and a $1500 tax return with the Prep Service, then it would only be financially worth it if the Prep Service cost less than $500.

I chose B on this one because I thought that it failed to consider the cost of opening an In-House Print shop. The added efficiency may not be worth it for a small company that does not create publications very frequently.

I understand answer A now, but I'm not sure how I should have crossed out answer B. Thanks

[Jeff Wren]

Hi TotalGoal,

While I agree that the cost of the tax preparation service would be something to be factored in when deciding whether to use it in real life, here the argument is limited to "if you want a large refund" rather than "if you want to be financially better off."

Not only is Answer B wrong because it doesn't have the correlation to causation flaw in the stimulus, you could also rule it out because the conclusion is not parallel to the conclusion in the stimulus.

In the stimulus we get the premise that taxpayers who use tax preparation services get larger refunds on average. And the conclusion is if you want a large refund, then use a tax preparation service.

In other words, the sufficient condition in the conclusion is the goal or desired outcome in the premise (here the large refund).

For Answer B, the parallel conclusion should read "If you want to produce your publications more efficiently, then you should establish an in-house print shop."

The actual conclusion of Answer B reads "If your company produces publications..." This is not parallel. It does not mention whether you are trying to be efficient.

For parallel and parallel flaw question, the terms will generally match up with the stimulus exactly, and if you find one answer (here Answer A) that does this, the others will be wrong even if just one term doesn't match exactly.