Tax for applied behavior analysis practices
A CPA for behavior analysts and ABA practices
An ABA practice is a staffing business with a clinical license attached. Once you are employing technicians, payroll is the largest thing on the return and it changes every other answer.
Where this return differs
What is actually different about behavior analysts at tax time
Not a longer version of the same advice. These are the places this practice type reliably differs from the return next to it.
Payroll scale changes the entity analysis
A practice employing technicians has a very different reasonable compensation picture from a solo clinician, because the owner is supervising and managing rather than only billing. The salary that is defensible moves with that role.
A retirement plan stops being optional to think about
Once there are employees, coverage and nondiscrimination rules determine who has to be included in any plan you set up for yourself. Choosing a plan without that in view is how owners end up funding far more than they intended.
Services delivered in homes and schools cross jurisdictions
In home and school based services put technicians in places that may create state obligations, and payroll tax follows where the work is performed rather than where the office is.
How it works
What working together looks like
A call first
Thirty minutes to hear what you have and whether this is a fit. If it is not, we will say so and point you somewhere useful.
A written scope and a fixed fee
You get both in writing before work starts, so the return you expected does not arrive with an hourly surprise attached.
Documents through a secure portal
Upload once, in one place, rather than emailing a K-1 with your Social Security number sitting in the attachment.
The questions, while they still matter
Anything that changes your number gets raised when it can still be acted on, not in a footnote after filing.
Then the next twelve months
Estimated payments, an entity change, a new state, a sale. Tax years are consecutive and treating them that way is most of the value.
What this firm does, and what it does not
PizzelloCPA, PLLC is a licensed CPA firm registered with the North Carolina State Board of Certified Public Accountant Examiners as firm no. 35339. It prepares returns and does tax planning. It does not perform attest services: no audit, no review, no compilation. If a lender or a landlord has asked you for an audited or reviewed financial statement, that is a different engagement at a different firm, and we will say so rather than stretch to fit it.
Books and the return are two different jobs. bookkeepz, LLC, an affiliated company, keeps monthly books for behavior analysts and other private practices, and its bookkeeping page for behavior analysts covers that side. bookkeepz is not a CPA firm and does not do tax work. Most clients who need both use both, under separate engagements.
Questions
What behavior analysts ask
My payroll is most of my expenses. Does that affect the QBI deduction?
It can. For a specified service business the phaseout comes first, but wages paid are part of the calculation where the deduction still applies. It is one of the places where the numbers on your payroll returns and the numbers on your income tax return have to agree.What should a BCBA owner pay themselves?
Enough to reflect the work actually being done, which for an owner supervising a team is more than a billing rate calculation. The number needs a basis you could explain, because that is the standard it would be judged by.We deliver services in several states. What does that mean?
Potential income tax filing and payroll registration in each, and the payroll side usually comes first. Identifying it as you expand is much cheaper than remediating registrations after the fact.Do you handle payroll processing?
No. This firm prepares returns and plans. Payroll processing and monthly bookkeeping run through bookkeepz, LLC, an affiliated company that is not a CPA firm.Talk to a CPA who has seen this practice before
Thirty minutes, no charge. Bring last year’s return and the thing you were not sure about.