You filed your return. You wrote the check. You survived.
And now you’re trying not to think about taxes again until next February.
Here’s the problem: that decision, the one to push taxes out of mind until winter, is exactly what makes tax season painful every single year.
In a recent episode of the TheraSaS podcast, I sat down with Alan Pruitt, founder of The Therapist CPA, to talk about what financially healthy private practices actually look like. Alan has 17+ years of CPA experience working exclusively with therapists and practice owners, and his wife is a licensed professional counselor and private practice owner herself. He gets it from both sides of the desk.
What came out of our conversation wasn’t a lecture on bookkeeping. It was a practical reframe that could change how much you keep from your practice every single year.
Alan Pruitt, The Therapist CPA
Alan’s firm doesn’t just file returns, they build them. Quarterly. So that by the time April rolls around, there are no surprises.
He also comes at this with something most CPAs don’t: context. His wife is in private practice. He’s watched firsthand how hard therapists work, and how quietly devastating it is when a large chunk of that effort disappears in taxes that could have been reduced with better planning.
“I love, love, love tipping waitresses,” Alan said. “But I’m not quite a fan of tipping the IRS. And we don’t want you to tip the IRS either.”
That said, Alan is clear: this isn’t about loopholes or avoiding taxes. It’s about knowing the rules of the game.
“It is hard to play a game if you don’t know the rules. When you’re running a business, it’s the exact same way.”
3 Tax Strategies Practice Owners Overlook
1. The S-Corp Election
If your practice is netting $50,000 or more after expenses, you may be leaving real money on the table by staying as an LLC or PLLC.
Here’s why: as a sole-member LLC, you pay self-employment tax (15.3%) on your entire net profit. Switch to an S-Corp, and you only pay that tax on the salary you pay yourself. Everything else passes through without the self-employment hit.
On a $100,000 profit, that difference can be $7,000–$8,000 back in your pocket. One form (IRS Form 2553) and a proactive CPA to help you file it.
Alan’s note: even if you missed the March 15th deadline, a late election can often be backdated to January 1st of the current year. This is exactly the kind of move that gets evaluated during tax saving season.
2. The Augusta Rule
Named after the Masters golf tournament in Augusta, Georgia where homeowners rented their homes during tournament week without wanting to be classified as landlords. This IRS provision allows business owners to rent their personal home to their business for up to 14 days per year.
The result: the business deducts the rental cost. You receive that income tax-free.
Depending on your market, that’s $700–$1,000 per day of business use. Across 14 days, that’s potentially $10,000–$14,000 in tax-free income and a legitimate business deduction, as long as you have a proper rental agreement and documented meeting minutes.
Use cases Alan’s seen: team planning days, strategic retreats, board meetings, documented work sessions with contractors.
3. Hire Your Kids
This one sounds too good to be true. It isn’t.
If your children do actual, documentable work in your practice like assembling promo materials, helping with content, or age-appropriate tasks, you can pay them up to $16,000 per year through the business. That’s a deduction for you. For them, it’s earned income below the filing threshold.
Two kids equals up to $32,000 in legitimate business deductions for work that was happening anyway.
Bonus: that earned income can fund a custodial IRA. As Alan noted, a nine-year-old with a Roth IRA has time on their side in a way no adult client ever will.
This one sounds too good to be true. It isn’t.
If your children do actual, documentable work in your practice like assembling promo materials, helping with content, or age-appropriate tasks, you can pay them up to $16,000 per year through the business. That’s a deduction for you. For them, it’s earned income below the filing threshold.
Two kids equals up to $32,000 in legitimate business deductions for work that was happening anyway.
Bonus: that earned income can fund a custodial IRA. As Alan noted, a nine-year-old with a Roth IRA has time on their side in a way no adult client ever will.
A Practice That Keeps More of What It Earns
“Top line revenue is vanity. Profit is sanity”
That line stuck from the whole conversation. You can run a full caseload, build a team, and still feel financially squeezed, if you’re not paying attention to what stays in your practice after every expense and tax bill.
The fix isn’t more clients. It’s better numbers, smarter structure, and a CPA who’s working with you in June instead of just seeing you in March.
