The Source: Rule Breakers, Lawmakers & Influencers | Episode 1 — The Tax Code Has Always Been on Your Side — Most Small Business Owners Just Don’t Know It.

A deep dive into the Big, Beautiful Bill and what it actually means for entrepreneurs

Robert Kiyosaki has said it for years: the tax code was not written as a guide to paying taxes. It was written as a guide to reducing them — for anyone willing to engage with it.

Julio Gonzalez, founder and CEO of Engineered Tax Services, has spent a career proving that point. After two decades in big accounting firms watching Fortune 500 companies eliminate enormous tax burdens through perfectly legal strategies, Gonzalez saw a glaring inequity: small business owners were systematically overpaying, not because the benefits weren’t available, but because no one was helping them access the same playbook.

That observation became the foundation of his company — and eventually led him to Washington, where he spent years working alongside congressional leaders to shape the very tax policy that governs the businesses his firm serves.

In a recent conversation on The Source: Rulebreakers, Lawmakers & Influencers podcast, Gonzalez broke down what has actually changed with the passage of the Big, Beautiful Bill, why permanency may be the most underrated win in the entire legislation, and what every small business owner should be doing right now.

The Permanency Problem Nobody Talks About

Every few years, Congress passes meaningful tax legislation — and then sets an expiration date on it.

The result is a cycle of uncertainty. Business owners make decisions based on deductions and credits that may or may not exist when the next cycle rolls around. Accountants spend months trying to catch up with new rules instead of proactively advising clients. And entrepreneurs who should be thinking five years out are instead watching a congressional clock.

The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was transformative in many ways, but it came with sunsets. Bonus depreciation, for example, was set at 100% in 2017, then began a scheduled decline: 80%, 60%, 40% — heading toward zero.

The Big, Beautiful Bill doesn’t just restore those provisions. It makes them permanent.

That distinction, according to Gonzalez, is the most important feature of the entire legislation — more impactful, in many ways, than any individual tax rate or deduction. Permanency means predictability. And predictability is what allows entrepreneurs to build.

What Actually Changed: A Practical Breakdown

Bonus Depreciation Restored to 100%

When a business purchases qualifying property — equipment, vehicles, certain real estate improvements — bonus depreciation allows the full cost to be expensed in the year of purchase rather than depreciated over several years. This is a cash flow tool as much as a tax tool. The business is out the money now; it makes sense to recognize the expense now.

After sliding toward near-zero, bonus depreciation is back at 100% and permanent, retroactive to January 1st of the current tax year.

R&D Tax Credits: A Three-Year Lookback for Small Business

For businesses with $31 million in revenue or under, one of the most significant provisions in the bill is the ability to go back three years and claim R&D tax credits that were missed or unavailable during the years the program was phased down under prior policy.

This isn’t a small thing. For qualifying businesses that invested in innovation, development, or qualifying research activities — and didn’t receive the full benefit — there are potential refunds sitting unclaimed. The three-year window is an opportunity that won’t be permanent.

The 199A Pass-Through Deduction: 20% Becomes 23%

When the 2017 tax bill lowered the corporate tax rate to 21%, it created a gap for pass-through entities — S corporations, LLCs, sole proprietors — who don’t file as C corporations. The 199A deduction was the answer: a percentage of qualified business income that could be deducted to make the effective rate more competitive.

That deduction has now increased from 20% to 23%, a meaningful improvement for the millions of business owners who operate as pass-throughs.

Section 179: From $2M to $2.5M

Section 179, which allows businesses to fully expense qualifying equipment purchases in the year they’re made, had its deduction limit increased from $2 million to $2.5 million. For capital-intensive businesses, the difference matters.

Individual Provisions: Tips, Overtime, Social Security

Beyond business-specific provisions, the bill includes three changes with broad individual impact. Tips are no longer subject to federal income tax — a provision that extends well beyond restaurant servers into the gig economy workers driving ride-shares, delivering food, and performing freelance services. Overtime pay receives similar treatment for qualifying workers. And Social Security income is no longer taxed at the federal level — reversing a policy that has been in place since 1983.

The Advice Gap Is the Real Problem

Here’s what Gonzalez keeps coming back to, and it’s worth sitting with: the tax code contains a benefit on virtually every page. The challenge isn’t access to the law — it’s access to the knowledge of how to use it.

Wealthy business owners and executives at large companies have teams of advisors whose entire job is finding and applying these benefits. Small business owners typically have a single accountant who is, through no fault of their own, overwhelmed keeping up with a constantly changing tax landscape. The result is reactive advice rather than proactive planning.

The recommendation: don’t wait for the accountant to bring the ideas. Use AI tools — ChatGPT, Grok, or others — to generate a starting list of potential tax strategies based on a specific business type, then bring that list to a tax professional as a starting point for conversation. The AI won’t be fully accurate on the latest changes, and it’s not a substitute for professional advice, but it’s a powerful tool for generating the right questions.

That proactive posture — treating tax planning the way one might treat preventive healthcare rather than emergency medicine — is what separates businesses that consistently optimize their tax position from those that consistently overpay.

What Comes Next

The Big, Beautiful Bill isn’t the end of the conversation. Gonzalez has continued engaging with Congress and the IRS on issues that persist — including what he describes as disproportionate IRS scrutiny of small businesses, which lack the legal and accounting resources to push back the way large corporations can. The message he’s bringing to lawmakers: getting the tax code right is step one, but fair and equitable enforcement is equally critical.

At the state level, the conversation continues as well. Property tax burdens on long-time homeowners, school board taxes on seniors no longer using the school system, and the regulatory weight placed on small employers are all areas where the federal wins of the Big, Beautiful Bill have not yet reached.

The tax code is, as Gonzalez says, written to reduce taxes. The question for every small business owner is whether they’re actually reading it — or at least finding someone who is.

This article is originally published on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/episode-1-source-rule-breakers-lawmakers-influencers-tax-owcee and aired on September 25, 2025 of The Source: Rulebreakers, Lawmakers & Influencers, featuring Julio Gonzalez, founder and CEO of Engineered Tax Services. Reach Julio at engineeredtaxservices.com or @TaxReformExpert on social media.