Reference · Labor Code and the state’s own forms · read 11 September 2026
The clinical questions stop at the door. These are the ones that carry penalties.
A therapy practice that puts one person on payroll becomes an employer, and the duties that attach are not about therapy at all: workers’ compensation cover, a new-hire report inside twenty days, meal periods measured from the fifth hour, paid sick leave available by a fixed day count, a wage statement with nine required items, and final pay that is due immediately on a discharge. None of them is waived because the employer is small, and most of them are cheap to do and expensive to miss.
Before the first day →Before the first day
Three things exist before anyone is paid.
Labor Code §3700: “Every employer except the state shall secure the payment of compensation” — by insuring with a carrier authorized to write compensation insurance in California, or by a certificate of consent to self-insure. The section has no small-employer exception, and it starts at the first employee rather than at some headcount.
A California employer registers with the Employment Development Department for payroll tax purposes; the department’s own page sets out when registration is required and how it is done. That account is what makes the deposits, the quarterly returns and the new-hire report possible.
California requires a set of workplace notices to be posted where employees can see them. The Department of Industrial Relations publishes the current list; a one-room practice with one employee posts the same notices as a larger one.
The classification question comes first
None of this applies to a genuine independent contractor — and in California a clinician doing the practice’s core work rarely is one. The 1099-versus-W-2 page runs the ABC test as the Labor Commissioner states it, including the detail that psychologists are exempt from it and marriage and family therapists, clinical social workers and professional clinical counselors are not.
The clocks
Six of them, and none is discretionary.
| Duty | The clock | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Report the hire to the state | 20 days | Unemployment Insurance Code §1088.5(d)(1): a new-hire report within 20 days of hiring. |
| Meal period | 5 hours | Labor Code §512(a): at least 30 minutes before the end of the fifth hour; waivable by mutual consent only where the day is no more than six hours. |
| Second meal period | 10 hours | §512(a) again: a second 30-minute period past ten hours, waivable up to twelve only if the first was not waived. |
| Paid sick leave available | 120 / 200 days | Labor Code §246: at least 24 hours or 3 days usable by the 120th calendar day of employment, and 40 hours or 5 days by the 200th. |
| Final pay, discharge | Immediately | Labor Code §201(a): wages earned and unpaid at the time of discharge are due and payable immediately. |
| Final pay, quit without notice | 72 hours | Labor Code §202(a) — and at the time of quitting where the employee gave 72 hours’ notice. |
Every figure here is in the section cited beside it. The sections are linked so the current text can be checked; wage-and-hour law changes more often than licensing law does.
The wage statement
Nine items, semimonthly or at each payment.
Labor Code §226(a) requires an accurate itemized statement in writing, furnished as a detachable part of the payment or separately where wages are paid by personal check or cash. The list is specific, and a payroll service produces it only if it has been given the right inputs.
The top line, before anything comes out.
Except as §226(j) provides; an exempt salaried employee is the usual exception.
Where the employee is paid on a piece-rate basis.
Deductions made on the employee’s written orders may be aggregated and shown as one item.
What actually arrives.
Not the pay date alone.
Or an employee identification number that is not a social security number — the section says “only the last four”, which is a privacy rule as much as a payroll one.
Where the practice incorporated, that is the corporation, not the clinician.
A clinician paid differently for clinical and administrative hours has two rates on the statement, not an average.
Wage statements are also records: §226 requires the employer to keep a copy, and a practice that keeps clinical records for seven years should not be the same practice that cannot produce a pay stub from last year. Where the practice is a corporation, the employer named on the statement is the corporation — the professional corporation page is where that entity comes from.
Then what
The pages around this one.
Employee or contractor
The ABC test
Three prongs, and the exemptions that do and do not reach therapists.
If you supervise them
Becoming a clinical supervisor
The training, the agreements and what the Board audits.
Where every figure came from
Sources.
The Labor Code
The agencies’ own pages
Every clock and every list item above is quoted or counted from the section cited beside it, read on 11 September 2026 and linked. Wage-and-hour law changes more often than licensing law, and an employer with employees in a city with its own ordinance may owe more than the state minimum. Nothing here is legal or tax advice, and a practice that is about to hire should have its own offer letter, handbook and payroll setup reviewed by someone qualified to do it.
