A Conversation With ... David Myers

Tell me about the Missouri Society of Certified Public Accountants. What services does it offer members?
We have about 8,000 members, and you must be a CPA or student to belong. It’s basically a proponent for CPAs in the state of Missouri. We help with statewide legislation, anything that affects the accounting industry. We want to see if that’s a good or bad thing for us and for the state as a whole. We also provide what’s called continuing professional education to our members. Every CPA in the state is required to have 40 hours of CPE a year.

Around half the people in the organization work for CPA firms, but the group also supports many more industries … people who get hired on places like O’Reilly Automotive. They still have the same requirements to keep their license as someone who works in a CPA firm. There is another large component of government CPAs, a lot in Jefferson City and the federal government. The last large group would be students. We try to recruit them as they become interested in pursing an accounting degree.

What is your role as chairman?
My term started July 1. It is a one-year term, but a three-year commitment.

The biggest goal I have is to enhance our connection with the students. We are doing a couple of things there to support accounting schools. One is to establish professorships, which means we are trying to attract good professors and give them financial support to do that. The first one was last year and we hope to do several more this year.

We also are trying to establish the Center For Public Trust. It’s a student organization on college campuses that teaches ethics and helps them get a certification. It’s a national organization we are trying to get established within several of the schools in the state.

Why is capturing the interest of students important for the association?
We are trying to set it up to get more and better CPAs for the future, because just like everywhere else in the world, there are a lot of baby boomers who are CPAs. There is going to be a huge amount of turnover in our profession in the next 10 or 15 years.

It is a pretty big need. We have already seen the baby boomer retirement start. It’s only going to accelerate. The people who are replacing the 65-year-old white males aren’t 20-year-old white males. There is a lot of diversity out there and we are trying to draw the best.

Among other areas, you advise in employee stock ownership plans. How does that work differ from a traditionally owned company?
I’ve helped companies establish ESOPs, or consider them. It’s a nice tax saving idea, but also a neat idea, having the employees own the business.

There is really a lot of significant differences from both the accounting side and the tax side. The only reason ESOPs exist is because they are a tax-favored type of business established by law for the principle of letting employers have a share of ownership in their own business. There are all sorts of nice special tax rules that give them benefits over a privately held company. There is a fairly complex area of law on the tax side. It also requires special financing. Certain banks in town like ESOPs and like to do ESOP loans. It can complicate things on the accounting side as well; how they report to shareholders and banks is different than a privately held company.

We probably touch 10 or 15 ESOPs in the area, doing some component of work.

What’s the biggest mistake you see business owners make?
I think a lot of times, what gets people in trouble are the pricing mistakes. I mean they don’t zero in on their market and how profitable their business is. Some businesses are so excited to get growth, they make bad moves. You might say a chain of restaurants is growing, so you think they must be doing great, but not necessarily. Growth is really hard to manage. If you don’t get your pricing right and your collections right, you are going to run out of money.