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The income categories of Senator Crocker’s proposed tax code are as broad as to fail to distinguish the sale of an old chair at a pawnshop from collecting profits in a sophisticated stock option move.
Title
The income categories
Your Result
Correct
Difficulty
Hard
Your Pace
0:02
Others' Pace
1:24
Video Explanation
Text Explanation
Split #1: the idiom "so [adjective] as to" is correct, and the construction "as [adjective] as to" is idiomatically incorrect. Choices (A) & (B) are incorrect on this split, and choices (C) & (D) & (E) are correct.
Split #2: the idiom "fail to" is correct, and the construction "fail in" is incorrect. Choices (B) & (E) are incorrect on this split, and choices (A) & (C) & (D) are correct.
Split #3: there are two acceptable idioms involving the verb "distinguish" — one is "to distinguish P from Q" (choices (A) & (D) have this correct); the other is "to distinguish between P and Q" (choice (B) has this correct). It is incorrect to use "distinguish between" with "from" (choice (E) makes this mistake) and to use "distinguish" + "and" without the word "between" (choice (C) makes this mistake).
Split #4: Parallel structure! In either of the forms of the "distinguish" idiom, the P and Q must be parallel in structure. Both can be gerunds, "selling" and "collecting" (choice (C) & (D) have this correct). Both can be nouns, "sale" and "profits" — no answer choice has that construction. It violates parallelism to have one gerund and one noun — choices (A) & (B) & (E) make that mistake.
Split #5: only one choice has this issue, but notice the mystery pronoun in (E) — who is the "he" mentioned in this choice?? Senator Crocker's name appears only in the possessive, and on the GMAT, that's not adequate to be the antecedent of a pronoun.
The only possible answer is (D).
Related Lessons
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