Browser-only practice economics · no account
How many clients can a fee increase lose and still pay?
A raise is a bet against attrition, and the odds are computable. Enter your fee, the new fee, your week and the share of clients you expect to lose: the page shows the break-even, the year with and without the raise after tax, and a phase-in where only new clients pay the new fee.
Your fee and week →Your fee and week
Eight numbers. The survey figures are context, not inputs.
Kept sessions are the ones that happen and are paid. Attrition is the share of sessions you expect to lose because of the raise — your estimate, and the whole page moves with it. Tenure drives the phase-in: the shorter the median stay, the faster a new-clients-only raise reaches the whole caseload. Costs are the practice’s monthly running costs before tax, the figure the practice simulator produces.
At other attrition
The same raise, losing more or fewer sessions.
| Sessions lost | Collected at the new fee | Difference, gross | Difference, after tax |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0% | — | — | — |
| 5% | — | — | — |
| 10% | — | — | — |
| 15% | — | — | — |
| 20% | — | — | — |
| 25% | — | — | — |
| 30% | — | — | — |
Collected at the new fee, the gross difference from the old fee, and the after-tax difference, at your fee, new fee, sessions, weeks, costs and filing status.
What the statute requires
The fee, or how it is computed, is disclosed before treatment begins. Every license.
The Board’s licensing statutes list, among the acts that are unprofessional conduct, failing to disclose to the client or prospective client the fee to be charged, or the basis on which it will be computed, before treatment begins: Business and Professions Code §4982(n) for marriage and family therapists, §4992.3(o) for clinical social workers, §4999.90(n) for professional clinical counselors and §4989.54(o) for educational psychologists.
This site’s reading, not the statute’s words: a changed fee is a changed basis. Put the new fee and its start date in writing, get the client’s agreement before the first session at it, and keep the record. If you give self-pay clients a good faith estimate, a fee change is a change to the expected charges and calls for a new estimate; the two documents page has the rule and the sentence to put in the estimate.
How it computes
Two years, one ratio, and a phase-in.
The practice grosses the same when (1 − attrition) × new fee = old fee, so the break-even attrition is 1 − old ÷ new. From $150 to $170 that is 11.8% of sessions; from $150 to $200, 25%. It does not depend on caseload, costs or tax.
Kept sessions × weeks at the old fee, and (1 − attrition) of them at the new fee, each less twelve months of costs, each through self-employment tax on 92.35% of profit, half deductible, the 20% qualified business income deduction with its phase-out, then the 2026 federal and the 2025 California schedules — the engine every money page here shares. The difference in take-home is what the raise is worth.
If the median client stays eight months, 12 ÷ 8 of the caseload turns over in a year — capped at 100% — and that share arrives on the new fee while the rest stay on the old one. No attrition is assumed among clients whose fee did not move.
Attrition is one number you set; it is not predicted. Sliding-scale slots, insurance-paid sessions and the timing of the change within the year are not modeled; the sliding-scale and payer-mix pages carry those.
Then what
The raise is priced. These pages price what surrounds it.
What the fee needs to be
The rate-target calculator
Start from the take-home you need and work back to the fee at your caseload.
The reduced-fee slots
The sliding-scale calculator
What each reduced session costs after tax, and what carries it.
Keeping the week full
The caseload calculator
Attendance, cadence and tenure turned into active clients and the consults a year that replace them.
The paperwork
Superbills and the good faith estimate
The two documents a private-pay California therapist must get right, including what a fee change does to the estimate.
Where every figure came from
Sources.
The statute
The engine
The survey figures are context and are not used in the arithmetic; every computed figure comes from what the reader entered. Sole proprietor; married filing separately is not modeled.
