Federal Govt. CR

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Federal Govt. CR

by aman88 » Sat Dec 15, 2012 8:51 am
In order to raise revenue, the federal government planned a tax amnesty program that allows tax delinquents to pay all owed tax without added financial penalty. However, economists projected that the federal government would collect a far lower percentage of total tax owed by delinquents than did state governments implementing similar programs.

Which of the following, if true, would most contribute to an explanation of the economists' projections?

A. Tax amnesty programs are only successful if they are widely publicized.
B. Most people who honestly pay their state tax are equally honest in paying their federal tax.
C. Although federal tax delinquents usually must pay high financial penalties, the states require far lower financial penalties.
D. The state tax rate varies considerably from state to state, but the federal tax is levied according to laws which apply to citizens of all the states.
E. Unlike most federal tax delinquents, most state tax delinquents fail to pay state tax because of an oversight rather than a decision not to pay.

OA E

Can someone please explain me this question. Also, I didn't understand the bold part. I completely ignored option E.

Thanks.
Source: — Critical Reasoning |

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by sri_r » Mon Dec 17, 2012 2:11 am
Hi aman88,

In CR questions, Premise + Assumption = Conclusion

Here premise = federal government planned a tax amnesty program that allows tax delinquents to pay all owed tax without added financial penalty

conclusion = Economist's prediction that this will result in lower tax collection than in states where such method was used for collecting state tax

We need to find the assumption that will help arrive at this conclusion. Without looking at the option, if we are to guess, then this could happen if people misuse this provision and do not pay federal taxes on time and pay them later without any penalty.

Option E says that people who default on state tax are those who forget to pay it and not purposely evade tax. So an amnesty program for state tax defaulters will be helping out innocent people who merely forgot to pay taxes. Whereas in case of federal tax the word 'delinquents' means people who do it on purpose. So implementing such a program will be actually favoring such delinquents.