St. Louis CPA Services for Small Business Owners
Most St. Louis accounting firms are built for one of two things. Either they are the big-name regional shops that quote $20,000-a-year minimums and treat sub-$5M businesses like an afterthought, or they are the solo preparers who handle the April return and disappear until next March. There is a real gap in the middle, and we built the firm to live in it.
Thompson Flaherty is an Illinois and Missouri-licensed CPA firm headquartered in the Metro East, fifteen minutes from downtown, working with small businesses and families across St. Louis, Clayton, St. Charles County and the surrounding suburbs. We work as a year-round CPA partner rather than a once-a-year filing service. Talk to a St. Louis CPA about what that would look like for your business.
What a St. Louis CPA Actually Does for a Small Business
The work splits into three categories, and a firm that only does one of them is leaving you exposed on the other two.
First there are the books: monthly bookkeeping, payroll, and sales tax compliance. This is the layer everything else depends on, and it is the layer most owners try to hold together in a spreadsheet for a year longer than they should. We cover this in detail on our St. Louis bookkeeping page.
Second there is the tax: annual returns, quarterly estimated payments, year-end planning, and the entity-structure decisions that quietly set your tax bill for the next decade. Our St. Louis tax accountant page goes deeper on that side of the work.
Third there is the strategy layer: cash forecasting, owner take-home planning, pricing math, and the conversations that actually change where a business ends up. Plenty of accountants in St. Louis will do the first two. The third is where you find out whether you hired a filing service or a CPA.
What Does a CPA Cost in St. Louis?
Pricing should be a number, not a mystery, so here is roughly where our St. Louis clients land.
A business tax return on its own, whether that is an S-corp or an LLC, generally runs $1,200 to $3,500 depending on complexity. Monthly bookkeeping is typically $400 to $1,500 a month based on transaction volume and how many accounts we are reconciling.
A full year-round relationship that bundles bookkeeping, tax filing, quarterly planning calls and access to us when something comes up sits between $1,200 and $3,000 a month for most clients. We quote a real number after a 30-minute intro call, and we would rather tell you we are not the right fit than talk you into a package you do not need.
Missouri and Illinois Together, Which Most CPA Firms in St. Louis Cannot Do
The genuinely useful thing about a CPA sitting on the Illinois side of the river is that the metro does not respect the state line and neither do our licenses.
Let’s look at an example. We work with an owner whose company is registered in Missouri, whose warehouse sits in Illinois, and who has employees living on both sides. That business has a Missouri return, an Illinois return, apportionment between the two, employees withholding into different states, and a city earnings tax question sitting underneath all of it. Handled well it is routine. Handled by two separate firms who do not talk to each other, it turns into amended returns.
The city’s 1% earnings tax sits underneath a lot of this. It reaches anyone living in St. Louis city whatever their employer’s location, and anyone employed by a business operating within the city whatever their home address, which is a wider net than most owners expect. It is the item we most often find missed on a new client’s prior-year filings. We wrote up how it works in our breakdown of the St. Louis earnings tax.
Where We Serve Across the St. Louis Region
We work with clients in St. Louis city, Clayton, University City, Maplewood, Webster Groves, Kirkwood, Creve Coeur, Ladue, Chesterfield, Des Peres, Town and Country, Brentwood, Florissant, and across St. Charles County.
A few areas have enough going on that we gave them their own page:
- Clayton tax accountants, for the professional service firms and executives concentrated around the Central Business District.
- University City CPAs, including the Wash U faculty and practice owners along the Delmar Loop.
- St. Charles CPAs, covering St. Charles, St. Peters and O’Fallon.
Most engagements run virtually, so the working relationship looks the same whether you are in the Central West End or out past Wildwood. When it is worth meeting face to face, the drive from Edwardsville is short.
When Should a St. Louis Business Hire a CPA?
There is no revenue number that applies to everyone, but there are a few moments where owners reliably outgrow doing it themselves.
The first W-2 hire is one, because payroll brings withholding, filings and deadlines that carry real penalties. The S-corp election question is another, and it is usually worth modelling before you assume it saves you money. Taking on work across the state line is a third. So is the first year you receive a K-1, or the first year the business throws off more cash than you have a plan for.
If two or more of those describe your year, the conversation is worth having now rather than in March.
What Makes Us Different From Other Accounting Firms in St. Louis
You work with the same CPAs every year, so nobody has to re-learn your business each January. Phone calls get returned. The off-season check-ins actually happen, which is when planning is worth something. The advice is built for your business rather than pulled off a template.
And we will tell you honestly when something is not the right move, even when the alternative carries a higher fee. That is a lower-drama way to run a firm and it tends to keep clients around.
Industries We Work With
We are a generalist firm by design, which means the industry mix is broad: professional service firms, healthcare and dental practices, real estate investors and small landlords, restaurants and hospitality, e-commerce and product businesses, trades and contractors, and small software startups.
Being a generalist is a deliberate choice. Most small businesses do not need a specialist, they need someone who understands how the whole picture fits together. Where a client genuinely needs niche expertise we say so and point them somewhere better.
How to Start With a St. Louis Accountant
Schedule a 30-minute intro call through our contact page. There is no cost and no pressure, and you will get a straight answer about whether we are the right firm for you.
If you want to read more about the work first, our business tax planning and monthly accounting pages cover what an ongoing engagement involves.
Frequently Asked Questions About St. Louis CPA Services
Does Thompson Flaherty work with St. Louis small businesses?
Yes. We are based in Edwardsville, Illinois, about fifteen minutes from downtown St. Louis, and we serve the whole metro on both sides of the river. We are licensed in Illinois and Missouri.
Do I need to be in Missouri for you to file my Missouri return?
No. Our Missouri licensing is what matters, not your zip code. We file for clients across the metro and nationally.
Can you take over mid-year from another accountant?
Yes, and mid-year is often the easier time to switch. We request the prior two years of returns and the current books, review what is there, and tell you what we find before you commit to anything.
Do you handle personal returns as well as the business?
For business clients, yes, and we generally recommend it. Owner compensation, distributions and the personal return are one connected decision, and splitting them across two firms is how planning opportunities get missed.