Browser-only practice economics · no account
At what caseload does private practice beat your job?
Put your salary and the benefits you would have to replace on one side, and your rate, attendance, practice costs and the health premium you would buy on the other. Both sides end in take-home after federal and California tax, and the page finds the weekly caseload where they cross.
Compare the two →The two sides
The job is flat. The practice is a slope. Where do they meet?
Everything the employer pays for that you would have to buy yourself counts for the job — the health contribution, a retirement match, anything else with a dollar value. Everything the practice costs you that the job did not counts against the practice. Both are entered monthly; the page annualizes.
Every caseload
Both take-homes, side by side, from eight sessions to thirty.
| Scheduled a week | Collected fees | Private take-home | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8 | — | — | — |
| 10 | — | — | — |
| 12 | — | — | — |
| 15 | — | — | — |
| 18 | — | — | — |
| 20 | — | — | — |
| 22 | — | — | — |
| 25 | — | — | — |
| 30 | — | — | — |
“Difference” is private take-home minus the job’s take-home plus benefits; negative means the job still pays more. The bold rows are the first three caseloads past the crossing.
How it computes
Two engines that share every constant.
The employee half of FICA (6.2% Social Security to the 2026 wage base of $184,500, 1.45% Medicare, 0.9% additional Medicare above $200,000), California SDI at 1.3% with no cap, and federal and California income tax after the standard deductions. Benefits and match are added back at the value you entered, because that is what the practice has to earn to replace them.
Self-employment tax on 92.35% of profit (both halves, 15.3%, plus the 0.9% above the threshold); half of it deducted; the health premium deducted above the line under §162(l); the 20% qualified business income deduction with its phase-out; then the same federal and California schedules. The premium is paid out of what is left.
Private take-home rises with sessions and the job does not move, so the page steps through caseloads in tenths of a session until the practice first matches the job’s take-home plus benefits. Above 60 a week it stops and says so.
Ramp time, an empty January, unpaid leave, the value of a predictable paycheck and the cost of your own admin hours are real and are not priced here. The comparison is honest about what it is: two take-homes at a steady state.
Then what
The crossing point is a number. The decision has three more parts.
The rate the target needs
The rate-target calculator
Run the other direction: start from the take-home you need and find the rate at every caseload.
Filling the week
How a caseload actually fills
The crossing caseload is a destination; this page is about how long the road to it is and which channel gets you there.
The full practice model
The practice simulator
Twelve expense lines, associates, and the structure you trade under — once the caseload is real.
Where every figure came from
Sources.
Federal
- IRS Revenue Procedure 2025-32 — 2026 rate schedules, standard deductions and the §199A phase-out
- Social Security Administration, contribution and benefit base — the 2026 wage base of $184,500
- IRS, Topic 751 — the employee Social Security and Medicare rates
- IRS, self-employment tax — the 92.35% factor and the deduction for half
- IRS Publication 535 / §162(l) — the self-employed health insurance deduction
California
The constants are the ones the practice simulator, the tax-strategy page and the rate-target calculator use, copied rather than restated, so every money page on this site agrees to the dollar.
