Critical Reasoning

A proposed change to federal income tax laws would eliminate deductions from taxable income for donations a taxpayer has made to charitable and educational institutions. If this change were adopted, wealthy individuals would no longer be permitted such deductions. Therefore, many charitable and educational institutions would have to reduce services, and some would have to close their doors.

The argument above assumes which of the following?

A) Without the incentives offered by federal income tax laws, at least some wealthy individuals would not donate as much money to charitable and educational institutions as they otherwise would have.

B) Money contributed by individuals who make their donations because of provisions in the federal tax laws provides the only source of funding for many charitable and educational institutions.

C) The primary reason for not adopting the proposed change in the federal income tax laws cited above is to protect wealthy individuals from having to pay higher taxes.

D) Wealthy individuals who donate money to charitable and educational institutions are the only individuals who donate money to such institutions.

E) Income tax laws should be changed to make donations to charitable and educational institutions the only permissible deductions from taxable income.


OAA

Please explain by negating. If we negate D doesn't it weaken the conclusion.

Many thanks in advance.

Kavin

Needgmat wrote:A proposed change to federal income tax laws would eliminate deductions from taxable income for donations a taxpayer has made to charitable and educational institutions. If this change were adopted, wealthy individuals would no longer be permitted such deductions. Therefore, many charitable and educational institutions would have to reduce services, and some would have to close their doors.

The argument above assumes which of the following?

A) Without the incentives offered by federal income tax laws, at least some wealthy individuals would not donate as much money to charitable and educational institutions as they otherwise would have.

B) Money contributed by individuals who make their donations because of provisions in the federal tax laws provides the only source of funding for many charitable and educational institutions.

C) The primary reason for not adopting the proposed change in the federal income tax laws cited above is to protect wealthy individuals from having to pay higher taxes.

D) Wealthy individuals who donate money to charitable and educational institutions are the only individuals who donate money to such institutions.

E) Income tax laws should be changed to make donations to charitable and educational institutions the only permissible deductions from taxable income.


OAA

Please explain by negating. If we negate D doesn't it weaken the conclusion.

Many thanks in advance.

Kavin

Hi Kavin,

Let's start by noting down the premises mentioned in the question stem and then move on to the options:

Premise 1: Proposed change: Eliminate deductions from taxable income for donations made by taxpayer to charitable & educational institutions
Premise 2: If change adopted, wealthy individuals no longer permitted such deductions
Conclusion: Many charitable & educational institutions would have to REDUCE services and SOME will have to close their doors

Assumptions: The number of donations will reduce. This implies that the deductions in taxable income is a factor for the amount of donations made by the wealthy.

Now, checking for the options:
A. Clearly, the conclusion is assuming that the total donations will reduce leading to reduction in services and some having to shut. Thus, according to the author these deductions would be a consideration for at least some of the wealthy individuals. We are saying only some wealthy individuals as this does not talk about all charities having to completely shutting their doors. CORRECT
B. If the conclusion talked about all educational and charitable institutions shutting their doors, then this could have been a plausible premise. With the current conclusion, this is not valid. INCORRECT
C. There is nothing mentioned in this direction by the author at all. INCORRECT
D. While the second premise talks about wealthy individuals not being able to use their donations as deductions from taxable income, since the proposed change does not talk about the institutions completely shutting down, this cannot be assumed to be the only source. Some other source would be keeping these institutions going even with reduced or no donations from the wealthy individuals. INCORRECT
E. Nothing mentioned in this direction in the question stem. INCORRECT.

So, the correct answer to this is A. In case, you have further clarifications, please feel free to respond or email us at [email protected]

An assumption is something that MUST BE TRUE in order for the conclusion to be logically valid. If you take a statement that must be true and flip it around, that opposite statement would by necessity DESTROY the entire argument.

When you're applying the NEGATION test, do not ask "does this weaken the argument?" Weakening simply means making it less likely to be true, but not necessarily invalidating. Instead, ask yourself "if I take the opposite of this statement, does it COMPLETELY INVALIDATE the argument?" If so, that's your answer.

A. If we negate: "Without incentives, all wealthy individuals would still donate the same amount." This undermines the entire argument --> Correct!

D. "Wealthy individuals... are not the only people who donate." Ok, if this is true, it hurts the argument, since the argument focuses on wealthy people. But it doesn't invalidate the argument - the conclusion could still be true, even with this negated statement. Thus, the answer choice was not something that HAD to be true.

Does that help?

Also, please always post your sources whenever you post a question!

Hi Ceilidh ,

Thanks for your explanation. It really helps.

Thanks,

Kavin

ceilidh.erickson wrote: When you're applying the NEGATION test, do not ask "does this weaken the argument?" Weakening simply means making it less likely to be true, but not necessarily invalidating. Instead, ask yourself "if I take the opposite of this statement, does it COMPLETELY INVALIDATE the argument?" If so, that's your answer.

@ceilidh.erickson, Thank you so much for wonderful explanation. Kudos!

Hi Verbal Experts,
Could you please let me know whether the following TWO ASSUMPTIONS are correct for this CR -

1. There aren't any OTHER MAJOR funding sources,apart from these Donations from Wealthy individuals.
OR
Wealthy individuals are MAJOR/PRIMARY contributors.

2. The loss of donations from these Wealthy individuals can't be compensated by donations from OTHER (MAJOR/SIGNIFICANT) funding sources.

RBBmba@2014 wrote:Hi Verbal Experts,
Could you please let me know whether the following TWO ASSUMPTIONS are correct for this CR -

1. There aren't any OTHER MAJOR funding sources,apart from these Donations from Wealthy individuals.
OR
Wealthy individuals are MAJOR/PRIMARY contributors.

2. The loss of donations from these Wealthy individuals can't be compensated by donations from OTHER (MAJOR/SIGNIFICANT) funding sources.

Your second assumption is certainly valid. If those losses could be offset by donations from other sources, the conclusion would no longer hold.

The validity of the first assumption would depend on the phrasing you use. For example: Wealthy individuals are major contributors. Yes. That has to be true. Otherwise there's no reason to believe that the impacted institutions would have to respond by reducing services. Does it have to be true that there are no other major sources of donations? Not necessarily. It just has to be true that the loss of donations from the wealthy individuals is substantial enough to force these institutions to respond by cutting costs. If 'charitable institution x' lost 60% of its funding, there could still be some contributors making major donations, but charitable institution x would likely be in trouble. (This is why the precision of your language in your second assumption makes is so desirable. There can be other major contributors. We're just assuming that they can't fully offset the loss of the donations from the wealthy individuals.)