Accountants for Dental Practices

A dental practice owner can most reliably reduce their tax bill by getting the ownership structure right, timing deductions such as equipment purchases and prepaid expenses before 30 June, and making concessional superannuation contributions. The biggest savings usually come from planning before the financial year ends, not from fixing things at tax return time.

There is no single right structure for a dental practice, but most established practices run through a company, often with a discretionary trust in the ownership chain and a separate entity holding equipment or premises. What decides it is the scale of the practice, whether you own the building, how you engage associates and hygienists, and what you eventually intend to do with the business. Personal services income rules and the capital gains tax treatment on a future sale are usually the two factors that settle it.

Dental practices need a specialist accountant because the financial structure of a practice differs from a typical small business in several material ways. These include service trust arrangements common to healthcare professionals, the heavy equipment finance and depreciation cycles, the tax treatment of associate dentists, the goodwill and valuation issues that arise around partnership or