Q1 - The government's tax collection agency

[Laura Damone]

Question Type:
Weaken

Stimulus Breakdown:
"Conclusion: The government's tax collection agency has not followed through on its plan to crack down on violations of corporate income tax law.

Premises: They announced the plan a year ago. Audits are the primary tool for detecting violations of corporate income tax law. Over the past year, no single audit of corporate income tas returns has been completed."

Answer Anticipation:
The word "completed" peaks my interest. Perhaps there are many audits in progress. Maybe it takes a really long time to complete these audits. And maybe, even though the plan was announced a year ago, the timeline for implementing the plan is longer than that.

Correct answer:
D

Answer choice analysis:
(A) "Broad campaign against corporate misconduct," while noble, is out of scope. Eliminate.

(B) Personal income tax audits are also out of scope.

(C) So what if most corporate audits don't reveal violations? They're still the primary tool for detecting violations, so this doesn't change our argument.

(D) Correct! If it generally takes more than a year to compete a corporate audit, the fact that there are no complete corporate audits since the plan was announced doesn't indicate that the government isn't following through on its plan.

(E) Irrelevant comparison. Eliminate.

Takeaway/Pattern:
This argument has a lot of temporal language: The plan was announced a year ago, over the past year there haven't been any completed audits, so the argument concludes the government hasn't followed through. All that temporal language can guide your prephrase in the right direction. This question is also a great example of how the debater's stance can help you on a Weaken question: "I accept the premise, but I dispute that it proves the conclusion, and here's why."

#officialexplanation