Browser-only practice economics · no account
What does a sliding-scale slot cost you, after tax?
A $60 discount is not a $60 cost. Self-employment tax and income tax would have taken part of that fee anyway, so the take-home you give up is smaller than the invoice says — and the number of full-fee sessions that carry one reduced session is a ratio you can compute. Enter your fee, your mix and your costs; the page does the rest on the same tax engine as the practice simulator.
Your fee and mix →Your fee and mix
Seven numbers, all yours. The survey figures are context, not inputs.
Kept sessions are the ones that happen and are paid. The share is the part of them at the reduced fee; the reduced fee is the average across those slots. Costs are the practice’s monthly running costs before tax, the figure the practice simulator produces. Filing status sets the tax. Nothing here judges how much to slide; it prices what you decide.
At other shares
The same fee and costs, with more or less of the week on the scale.
| Share on the scale | Blended fee | Revenue given up | Take-home given up | Take-home |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5% | — | — | — | — |
| 10% | — | — | — | — |
| 15% | — | — | — | — |
| 20% | — | — | — | — |
| 25% | — | — | — | — |
| 30% | — | — | — | — |
| 40% | — | — | — | — |
Blended fee, revenue given up, take-home given up and take-home, at your full fee, reduced fee, sessions, weeks, costs and filing status, as the share on the scale moves.
How it computes
Two years side by side, and the difference between them.
Kept sessions × weeks, split by the share on the scale: the full-fee sessions at your fee plus the reduced ones at the reduced fee, against a year in which every session were full fee. The difference is the revenue given up.
Revenue less twelve months of costs is profit. Profit goes through self-employment tax on 92.35% of it, half deductible, the 20% qualified business income deduction with its phase-out, then the 2026 federal schedule and the 2025 California schedule — the engine every money page here shares. The difference in take-home is the real cost of the scale.
Take-home given up divided by reduced sessions is the after-tax cost of one reduced session. The invoice discount minus that is the share tax would have taken from the fee anyway; at higher profit the share is larger, which is why the same scale costs a full practice less per slot than a new one.
A full-fee session yields its after-tax share of the all-full-fee year. The after-tax cost of one reduced session divided by that yield is the number of full-fee sessions that fund it — the exchange rate the practice is actually running on.
Then what
The slot is priced. These pages price the rest.
The fee itself
The rate-target calculator
Start from the take-home you need; the full fee that gets there at your caseload.
What can be verified about fees
California therapist rates, 2026
Advertised fee, collected fee, sliding scale and filled-session rate are different measures; this is what the published sources support.
The whole mix
The payer-mix simulator
Insurance, private pay and reduced-fee channels together, with cancelations, collection and admin time.
Where every figure came from
Sources.
The engine
The survey figures are context on the page and are not used in the arithmetic; every computed figure comes from what the reader entered. Sole proprietor; married filing separately is not modeled.
