FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Founder Julio Gonzalez and Ambassador Charles “Duke” Tanner say billions in public funding go unused because smaller businesses, churches, and nonprofits cannot navigate the system
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Engineered Tax Services is expanding its public argument that grant funding, government contracts, and tax incentives are failing the organizations they were written to serve — not because the money disappeared, but because most smaller operators never get a guide.
Founder and CEO Julio Gonzalez and Charles “Duke” Tanner, the firm’s Vice President of Community Affairs & Outreach and National Ambassador, say the country has built a two-track funding system. Large companies keep specialized teams to identify credits, grants, and contracts. Small businesses, grassroots nonprofits, churches, veterans, women-owned firms, and returning-citizen operators often do not know the programs exist, much less how to qualify.
“Smaller businesses and nonprofits miss billions of dollars in tax credits, tax incentives, grants, government contracts, and other government funding — not because they do not qualify, but because they often do not know these opportunities exist or how to access them,” Gonzalez said.
Tanner, a former professional boxer who served more than 16 years in federal prison before receiving a full presidential pardon in 2025, said the funding gap is also a second-chance gap. “Purpose needs resources. We can tell people to rebuild their lives, open businesses, serve their neighborhoods, and create jobs — but those goals require capital.”
A Firm Built Around Accountants, Now Built Around Funding
Gonzalez founded ETS in 2001 to give accounting firms access to specialized tax work historically reserved for Fortune 500 companies and national advisory practices. The company still describes its model as working alongside CPAs rather than replacing them, using engineers, tax attorneys, and scientists to support cost segregation, energy incentives, research credits, and related strategies.
In recent years, Gonzalez said, the mission has widened from tax equality to tax and grant equality. Reducing a tax bill, he said, is only one form of capital. Grants and government funding can launch a program, hire staff, expand services, or keep a community organization from stalling.
Tanner’s role is to take that infrastructure outside traditional client channels. He works with businesses, churches, nonprofits, municipalities, and community leaders to identify possible grant and incentive pathways, then connect them with specialists who can determine eligibility.
“I connect people who are often overlooked with real economic opportunities,” Tanner said. “The problem is not always a lack of vision — it is often a lack of access.”
Who Is Getting Left Out
Both men say the organizations most often excluded are not the weakest ideas in the market. They are the groups without internal grant offices, government-contracting staff, or professional networks that open doors.
Tanner said he has watched mission-driven groups remain stuck in survival mode until they become funding-ready. Once the paperwork, structure, and guidance are in place, he said, the conversation shifts toward hiring, equipment, and expanded services.
He also ties the grant work to reentry. A release from prison, he said, does not include housing, employment, transportation, mentorship, or capital. “Release paperwork may let someone leave prison, but it does not automatically give that person the tools to rebuild a life.”
Gonzalez said equality in this context does not mean identical outcomes. It means a genuine chance to enter the process. “A small business should have access to the same level of expertise as a Fortune 500 company. A nonprofit with a powerful mission should be able to compete for funding even without a large development department.”
What Comes Next
ETS is positioning the grant push as part of a broader platform that includes tax incentives, government contracts, community outreach, and ETS Cares, the company’s philanthropic initiative under Gonzalez’s Engineered Impact foundation.
Tanner, author of Duke Got Life and co-founder of Legacy Impact Technologies and the Legacy Impact Foundation, said the test is practical. “I measure the mission by whether someone receives help, finds an opportunity, reunites with family, gains employment, or avoids returning to prison.”
Gonzalez said the firm’s next phase is speed and access: identifying opportunities earlier and making sophisticated funding tools usable by organizations that do not already speak the language of federal programs.
Grant eligibility is determined by program rules and individual facts. Awards are not guaranteed.
About Engineered Tax Services
Engineered Tax Services is a national specialty tax, incentives, grants, and government-funding firm based in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Credits: The KR Media Group.
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Company: Engineered Tax Services
(E) mail: info@engineeredtaxservices.com
Website: https://engineeredtaxservices.com
City: West Palm Beach
State: Florida
Country: USA
