About the Author
Meet David Spray
Founder, Export Advisors
David Spray is a serial entrepreneur who founded Export Advisors in 2006 from Houston, Texas, at the heart of the U.S. export industry. The firm does one thing, the IC-DISC, and that focus hasn't changed in nearly two decades.
David started it because the IC-DISC demands deep, specialized knowledge, and most CPA firms don't have the bandwidth or the inclination to build it. That gap was both an opportunity and a calling. Since then, Export Advisors has partnered with thousands of privately held exporters and helped them save more than $100 million in taxes.
Scrap and recycling companies have been clients since 2006. The firm's systems are built for the mixed grades and shifting commodity prices a yard deals with, and it re-runs each client's commission calculation every year, transaction by transaction, across the full product mix. It has even paid several of the larger scrap software providers to build a custom report holding exactly the data that calculation needs.
Export Advisors works alongside a client's existing CPA rather than replacing them. The firm is a member of the IC-DISC Alliance, and David hosts The IC-DISC Show podcast.
In Their Own Words
Why I wrote this book
For 13 years I checked in with one scrap yard owner, and every year I got the same answer. <em>"We've got everything under control, Dave. We're good, thank you very much."</em> He wasn't brushing me off. He believed it, because that's what his CPA had told him.
When his CPA firm was bought by a larger one, he finally called us, and we went back and ran the years. His IC-DISC had been filing zero returns. Run transaction by transaction, that yard would have kept more than $10 million in additional tax savings, and not one of those years could be recovered.
Nobody in that story was careless. Roughly one company in 200 qualifies for an IC-DISC, so most CPAs go a whole career without preparing one. Scrap yards fit this structure better than almost anyone, and they're the least likely to hear about it from their industry, their broker or their accountant.
I wrote this book so you can find out where your yard stands before another year closes. It's education, not advice on your own return. Read the chapter that sounds like you, then take the questions in it to your CPA, or to us.
Next Steps