The conclusion of this argument is: "It is not correct that the people of the United States, relative to comparable countries, are the most lightly taxed." However, the author concedes that the United States does have the lowest tax "as percent of gross domestic product, of the Western industrialized countries." Why then does the author conclude what she does? Because according to the author, "tax rates alone do not tell the whole story. People in the United States pay out of pocket for many goods and services provided from tax revenues elsewhere." The author gives us the example of universal healthcare, "which is an entitlement supported by tax revenues in every other Western industrialized country. United States government healthcare expenditures are equivalent to about 5 percent of the gross domestic product, but private healthcare expenditures represent another 7 percent." The author makes a subsidiary conclusion from this stating that "this 7 percent, then, amounts to a tax."
What's the problem here? Well, the author argues that if you also take private expenditures, such as healthcare, to be tax, then it's not correct that the people of the United States are the most lightly taxed, since they pay out of pocket for many goods and services provided from tax revenues in other countries. Private expenditures, however, are not taxes.
Thus, answer choice (B) is correct in describing why the argument is most vulnerable to criticism. The argument unreasonably extends the application of a key term by extending the definition of "taxes" to include private expenditures.
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