Accountants for medical and allied health.
GPs, specialists, dentists, physios and allied health owners: your industry's tax landscape has moved sharply in the last few years. We keep practices structured, compliant and profitable.
Rated 4.9 from 520+ Google reviews · Chartered Accountants · Xero Platinum Partner
What's keeping practice owners up at night.
Three issues dominate medical accounting right now - and all three are structural, which means they are fixable.
Payroll tax on practitioners
State revenue offices are applying payroll tax to many clinic-practitioner arrangements, retrospectively. Whether yours is exposed turns on contracts and payment flows - we review and restructure before the audit letter, not after.
Service entities, done properly
Still legitimate, still useful - if fees are commercial and the substance matches the documents. We build service arrangements that hold up to scrutiny.
Practice structures
Ownership, new partners, asset protection and exit - structured while options are still open. Restructuring an established practice costs ten times what starting right does.
Practice bookkeeping
Practice software, Medicare, gap payments and practitioner splits reconciled weekly in Xero, so the numbers you manage by are real.
Personal + practice tax
The practice, your personal return, your super - one advisor seeing the whole picture is where real planning happens.
Growth decisions
New rooms, new practitioners, buying the building - modelled properly before you commit, with LINK.com.au's finance team behind you.
Guides for your kind of business.
What your corner of the industry can claim, how GST treats your work, and the structure question answered for your situation. Pick yours:
Doctors & GPs →
Claims, GST and structure for doctors & gps
Dentists →
Claims, GST and structure for dentists
Physiotherapists →
Claims, GST and structure for physiotherapists
Psychologists →
Claims, GST and structure for psychologists
Chiropractors →
Claims, GST and structure for chiropractors
Podiatrists →
Claims, GST and structure for podiatrists
Optometrists →
Claims, GST and structure for optometrists
Medical specialists →
Claims, GST and structure for medical specialists
What this looks like in practice.
A multi-disciplinary allied health practice, six practitioners and four support staff.
Case study · Medical & allied healthSix practitioners, one service entity, and a payroll tax question nobody had asked.Service agreements reviewed and rewritten before a review arrived, not after. See what changed
The background
A practice built the way most are: the owner started solo, brought in practitioners under service agreements as demand grew, and set up a service entity to hold premises, equipment, reception and billing. Every practitioner was engaged as a contractor, invoicing the service entity or having fees collected on their behalf.
The challenge
That structure is completely ordinary, and it is also the exact structure that state revenue offices have been examining. Payroll tax rulings on medical and allied health practices have turned on how the arrangement actually operates - who holds the patient relationship, who collects the fee, how money flows back to the practitioner, whether the agreement is a genuine service arrangement or an employment relationship wearing a service agreement's clothes. This practice's agreements had been drafted once, years earlier, from a template. Nobody had compared what the paperwork said against what the practice did day to day, and those two things had drifted a long way apart.
The approach
The work was not tax planning. It was establishing the practice's actual position, in writing, while there was still time to change the things that could be changed.
How the work ran
Stage 1
Establish what is actually happening
Money flow was mapped end to end - who bills, whose bank account fee income lands in, how and when practitioners are paid, who carries the patient relationship, who directs hours. Compared against the signed agreements, three material inconsistencies were documented.
Stage 2
Quantify the exposure honestly
The potential payroll tax position was estimated on the practice's own numbers, across the relevant lookback, and put in front of the owner as a figure rather than an anxiety. Advice was taken on the specific arrangements. Nothing was assumed to be safe because it had never been questioned.
Stage 3
Fix the arrangements, then the paperwork
The operating practices that could be changed were changed first, and the service agreements were rewritten to describe the arrangement as it now genuinely runs. Doing it in that order matters: rewriting the document without changing the conduct produces a better-drafted description of the same problem.
What changed
- Service agreements
- template, years oldrewritten to match practice
- Money flow
- undocumentedmapped end to end
- Payroll tax position
- unknownquantified, advised on
- Practitioner onboarding
- ad hocdocumented process
- Owner's exit optionality
- unclearstructure fit for sale or partner entry
The practices that have had a difficult time with this were rarely doing anything unusual. They were running a structure everybody runs, drafted once and never revisited, and finding out what it meant at the least convenient moment.
A worked example, built from the pattern these engagements follow in medical & allied health. The business is composite and unnamed; the mechanics, the sequence and the order of work are the ones we use. Talk to us about your own numbers.
Frequently asked questions.
Does payroll tax apply to my contracted practitioners?
In Queensland (and most states), revenue offices have applied payroll tax to many clinic-practitioner arrangements under the relevant contract provisions, and the outcome turns on how your agreements and payment flows are actually structured. If your practice hasn't had its arrangements reviewed recently, that review is urgent - the assessments are retrospective.
Are service entity arrangements still okay?
Service entities remain common in medical practice, but they attract ATO attention when the service fees aren't commercial or the substance doesn't match the paperwork. We structure and document them conservatively, in line with ATO guidance.
What structure suits an allied health practice?
It depends on how many practitioners own the business, how you engage clinicians, and your growth plans. Multi-owner practices especially benefit from getting the structure right before adding partners.
Can you handle the bookkeeping for a busy practice?
Yes - including the reconciliation quirks of practice management software, Medicare and gap payments, and practitioner splits. Your Xero file stays current weekly.
Do you work with doctors personally as well as the practice?
Yes. Most of our medical clients have us handle the practice, their personal tax and often their SMSF - one team seeing the whole picture is where the planning value comes from.
Get your practice arrangements reviewed.
Especially if no one has looked at your practitioner contracts since the payroll tax cases. The first conversation is free.
Or call 07 3899 8311.