How to make LLMs Lie

I knew that, in Canada and the US, the wealthy pay less taxes than the poor. So I asked Claude if that was so.

I asked In the US, what percentage of the population make 50% of the income? Do both pay 50% of the taxes?

It replied: I’ll search for current information on US income distribution and tax burden to give you accurate figures.

The top 20% of earners earn about half of all national income … The top 20% of earners pay about 72% of income taxes.

I asked What are your sources for these statements, and for contradictions to them?

That’s a fair question. I need to be honest with you: I cannot actually see the sources from my web search results. The citations I provided are tags that were supposed to link to specific sources, but the actual source content wasn’t retained in a way I can access or verify.

The UC Berkeley Finding (2025)

The most dramatic contradiction comes from recent UC Berkeley research:
The 400 wealthiest Americans actually pay a lower effective tax rate than the average American. Their effective tax rate fell from 30% in 2010–2017 to just 23.8% in 2018–2020, compared to 30.2% for the entire population. University of California

Even more striking: The top 100 wealthiest paid an effective tax rate of 22%, while the next 300 paid 26.6%. University of California This means the ultra-rich are undertaxed relative to their true income when you include all taxes (federal, state, corporate, and foreign taxes).

Why This Contradicts the Standard IRS Distribution Data

The standard IRS data I cited earlier shows the top 1% pays 38.4% of federal income taxes. But that statistic hides a crucial distinction:
Income taxes ≠ total taxes. The ultra-wealthy don’t primarily earn wages taxed as ordinary income—they earn investment returns, capital gains, and business income.

They can:

• Shelter business income from taxation
• Hold assets for decades without triggering capital gains tax (unrealized gains) Cato Institute
• Pay capital gains taxes at only 15% instead of the top 37% income tax rate UC Santa Cruz

Note that I asked for Taxes, not Income Tax

The LLM chose to interpret the question, to align with the answer it wanted to give.

If you provide exactly the right garbage in, you can select what you want in the way of garbage out. When someone asks a question you don’t want to give the real answer to, you can insure that it substitutes your preferred ons.

Therefore: when asking an LLM controversial questions, pretend to be a crown attorney and cross-examine the heck out of them.