Most companies hire spokesmen to make the work sound human. Julio Gonzalez hired Charles “Duke” Tanner because the work was not reaching the humans.
Gonzalez built Engineered Tax Services for a brutal market fact: the tax code, the grant system, and government contracting already contain money, and most of the people who need it cannot find the entrance. Tanner walked out of 16 years, six months, and 21 days in federal prison as one of the few men who can stand in a CPA office, a church, a city hall, and a neighborhood that stopped expecting help — and be believed in all four.
That is the partnership. Not a founder plus a story. A machine plus a bridge.
“The system would lose a bridge built from lived experience,” Tanner said of the work. “That trust cannot be manufactured through a program or job title.”
Two Fluencies
Gonzalez’s fluency is the code. He founded ETS in 2001 so accounting firms could deploy engineers, tax attorneys, and scientists the way Fortune 500 companies already did. Cost segregation. Energy incentives. R&D credits. Grants. Government contracts. Government funding. He will not let the firm be reduced to one product. He also will not let it step over the CPA. The model is to arm the accountant, not replace him.
Tanner’s fluency is the cost. 19–0 in the ring. Two life sentences. A son who went from two to 19 while his father was gone. Commutation. A full pardon in May 2025. Duke Got Life on the record. He did not come home to be admired. He came home because freedom without purpose, he said, is another prison.
“My commutation and pardon did not erase my past,” Tanner said. “They gave me a responsibility to use it to help others.”
Gonzalez heard that and put him inside the firm. “He can reach communities that traditional institutions often cannot. He is not merely telling people that transformation is possible — his life proves it.”
Where the Money Actually Dies
Both men keep pointing at the same corpse. Opportunity is written down. Access is not.
Small businesses, churches, grassroots nonprofits, veterans, women-owned operators, minority founders, and returning citizens are not losing because their ideas are weak. They are losing because they do not have grant departments, contracting shops, or anyone to translate the process. Large institutions do. That is the whole racket.
Tanner’s version is sharper because he has watched the other failure up close. Reentry programs complete paperwork and call it mercy. They do not build a career, capital, ownership, or a father who can stay in the house. “Release paperwork may let someone leave prison,” he said. “It does not automatically give that person the tools to rebuild a life.”
So grants are not charity language inside this firm. They are how a second chance stops being a speech. Purpose needs resources. A nonprofit with a real mission still needs funding-ready files. A man coming home still needs work. A church feeding a zip code still needs someone who can find the program that was written for that work and never delivered.
ETS Cares and Engineered Impact are Gonzalez putting the company’s weight behind veterans, animal rescue, second-chance groups, and overlooked communities. Tanner is the one who keeps the work from rotting into pictures and titles. “I measure the mission by whether someone receives help, finds an opportunity, reunites with family, gains employment, or avoids returning to prison.”
The Fight They Will Not Soften
Gonzalez’s non-negotiable is integrity. If the firm cannot defend the study, the credit, the grant, or the contract, it does not go out the door.
Tanner’s non-negotiable is the lie that people never change. “Redemption becomes policy when we remove unnecessary barriers to employment, housing, education, licensing, and capital. Redemption without action is only a word.”
What Remains Unfinished
This is the part of the story that does not fit in a title.
Gonzalez is still the builder. Twenty-five years after founding ETS, he is not describing a finished firm. He is describing a national platform that is supposed to find tax incentives, grants, government contracts, and capital earlier, move faster, and stop forcing businesses and accounting firms to wander the system alone. He wants a small operator to walk in with the same quality of expertise a Fortune 500 company takes for granted. He wants a nonprofit without a development department to still be able to compete. He wants veterans, women, minorities, and returning citizens to know what exists and have qualified people help them pursue it. Equality, in his definition, is not a promised outcome. It is a real entrance.
He is also the reason Tanner is inside the building. Gonzalez did not need another speaker. He needed someone who had already lived the cost of being locked out, then came back with relationships, credibility, and a refusal to waste the second chance. That decision is now part of the firm’s public identity. ETS Cares and Engineered Impact — “Engineer a Better World” — are Gonzalez putting philanthropic weight behind the same thesis. Engineered Jet Tax is him taking structure into another closed market. The through-line has not changed since 2001: sophisticated tools should travel farther than they historically have.
Tanner is still the proof and the debt. He is a husband, father, and grandfather who will tell you the pardon was not the victory lap. The victory is whether he used the years he got back. He wants his son to remember that his father came home and became the man he was supposed to be. He wants a stranger to remember that he did not waste his freedom. He wants a man getting out this month to hear that pride will get him locked back up faster than the system will, and that one disciplined step is how a life starts again.
That is why Legacy Impact Technologies and the Legacy Impact Foundation exist beside the ETS title. That is why the Jack Brewer Foundation, REFORM Alliance, and the Aleph Institute matter to him. One company can fund and structure. It cannot, by itself, sit with a father, a family, a prison policy fight, and a community that has heard enough speeches. Tanner’s next 12 months are not abstract. Expand the grant and economic-access work. Build stronger government and community partnerships. Push technology that can serve people inside and after prison. Keep worthy clemency cases from dying in silence. Stay present at home while he does it.
If the work disappeared tomorrow, the country would not lose a press release. It would lose Gonzalez’s machinery and Tanner’s bridge. One without the other is incomplete. A funding firm with no translator stays in the offices that already know how to hire it. A second-chance advocate with no capital stays on the circuit. They are trying to make sure neither of those failures gets the last word.
Who gets into the process.
Who gets the contract.
Who gets to be a father in the house.
Who still has a bridge when the speech is over.
Two leaders. Two histories. One standard. Build the machinery. Walk it into the room. Leave the door open behind you.
About Julio Gonzalez
Julio Gonzalez is Founder, CEO, and Chairman of Engineered Tax Services and the force behind ETS Cares, Engineered Impact, and Engineered Jet Tax. A national tax reform expert, he founded ETS in 2001 to give accounting firms specialized tax, incentive, grant, government-contract, and funding capability that had long been reserved for the largest companies and wealthiest families. His public standard is tax and grant equality — not a guaranteed result, a genuine chance to enter the process.
About Charles “Duke” Tanner
Charles “Duke” Tanner is Vice President of Community Affairs & Outreach and National Ambassador for Engineered Tax Services. A former 19–0 professional boxer, author of Duke Got Life, husband, father, and grandfather, he served 16 years, six months, and 21 days after a double life sentence and received a full presidential pardon in May 2025. He advocates for second chances, reentry, fatherhood, prison reform, public policy, and economic access, and is Co-Founder of Legacy Impact Technologies and the Legacy Impact Foundation.
About Engineered Tax Services
Engineered Tax Services is a national specialty tax, incentives, grants, government contracts, and government-funding firm headquartered in West Palm Beach, Florida. ETS works alongside CPAs rather than replacing them.
Credits: The KR Media Group.
Media Contact
Company: Engineered Tax Services
(E) mail: info@engineeredtaxservices.com
Website: https://engineeredtaxservices.com
City: West Palm Beach
State: Florida
Country: USA
