Editor, Gazette-Journal:

Last week’s letter by Bill Wallace (“Tax reform better than what we have now,” Jan. 11 Readers Write) was instructive and informative. He offered some great insight into the distribution and equity of our tax liability specific to the federal income tax. He offered some statistics that showed that the top 50 percent of taxpayers paid 97.3 percent of all federal income tax.

Just to clarify: The federal, state and local governments have multitudes of hidden or non-graduated taxes that hit lower wage earners just as hard as higher earners.

Good examples are Gloucester’s food tax, real estate tax, personal property tax, state sales tax, as well as numerous other fees and taxes. The Affordable Health Care Act alone has some 15 hidden taxes. Can you think of anything that isn’t taxed? As a percent of income, any non-graduated tax makes it more difficult for the working poor to function.

For the lower wage earner, this disparity in ta...