If you’ve typed “financial advisor for doctors” into Google, you’re probably looking for two different professionals, not one. In Australia, an accountant or registered tax agent handles how your income is structured, taxed and reported, while a licensed financial adviser, authorised under an Australian Financial Services Licence, handles investment strategy, insurance and formal advice on your super. Most doctors need the first one straight away and the second one once their structure is settled and there’s actually surplus to invest.
This page walks through how to work out which one you need first, what doctor-specific advice should actually cover, what it tends to cost, and how to check the person you’re talking to has done this work before.
What Does “Financial Advisor For Doctors” Actually Mean?
“Financial advisor” isn’t a protected term in Australia the way “registered tax agent” or “financial adviser” (the licensed kind) are. Anyone can put “financial advisor for doctors” on a website. What actually matters is which of two regulated roles the person in front of you holds, because they’re licensed separately and cover different ground.
A registered tax agent, listed on the Tax Practitioners Board’s public register, can legally prepare and lodge your tax return, advise on your business structure, and manage your BAS and payroll obligations. An accountant with medical clients understands personal services income, service trusts and the payroll tax issues specific to medical practices, on top of the standard tax return work.
A financial adviser holding an Australian Financial Services Licence, or authorised under one, is who you need for personal advice on specific investments, superannuation strategy and insurance. You can check anyone claiming this status on ASIC’s Financial Advisers Register through Moneysmart, which shows their licensee, qualifications and what products they’re authorised to advise on.
Doctor financial planning in Australia usually needs both roles working together, one on structure and tax, one on investment and insurance, rather than either one trying to cover the whole picture alone.
Do You Need An Accountant Or A Licensed Adviser First?
If you’re negotiating your first private billing contract, an associate agreement, or setting up a company or trust to bill through, then start with an accountant who has actually reviewed medical practice arrangements before. Getting the structure wrong at this stage is expensive to unwind later, and no investment strategy fixes a structure that’s already generating the wrong tax outcome.
If your structure is already sound, your practice or hospital income is stable, and you have surplus cash flow you want invested, insured or built into a formal retirement strategy, then a licensed financial adviser is the next call. By this point the two professionals should already be talking to each other, because your adviser’s investment strategy needs to sit inside whatever structure your accountant has set up.
What Should Financial Planning For A Medical Professional Actually Cover?
Generic wealth management advice misses the details that are specific to how doctors actually get paid. Proper financial planning for a medical professional in Australia should test your situation against several rules that a general practice accountant or adviser may never have encountered.
Personal services income (PSI) rules apply when your income is mainly a reward for your own skill or labour rather than a genuine business. If your billing arrangement fails the results test, the unrelated clients test, the employment test and the business premises test, the ATO can attribute that income back to you personally regardless of which company or trust banked it, switching off income splitting and many deductions.
Payroll tax on contracted GPs has become a live issue since the Thomas and Naaz Pty Ltd v Chief Commissioner of State Revenue decision in New South Wales. Where a practice collects patient billings and pays contracted doctors a share after a service fee, that arrangement can meet the definition of a relevant contract for payroll tax purposes in Victoria and other states, even where the doctor is a genuine contractor for tax and super purposes. Thresholds and any bulk billing exemptions change with each state budget, so confirm the current position with the State Revenue Office Victoria or your accountant rather than relying on a figure you read somewhere online.
Division 293 tax adds an extra 15 percent tax on concessional super contributions once your income plus those contributions exceed $250,000 in a financial year, a threshold plenty of specialists and established GPs cross without realising until their notice of assessment arrives.
Division 296 tax is newer and worth knowing about even early in your career. Legislation enacted in March 2026 introduces a 15 percent tax on the earnings attributable to any total super balance above $3 million from the 2026-27 financial year, with a further 10 percent above $10 million. It matters most to doctors later in their career, or anyone running an SMSF that holds practice premises, but it changes the maths on how aggressively you should be topping up super well before you get near that threshold.
Self managed super funds come up often because they let a fund buy the premises a practice operates from and lease it back at market rent, something an industry fund can’t offer. That structure is genuinely useful for some practice owners, but it brings trustee duties, an annual audit, and now the Division 296 settings above into the decision.
A Worked Example: A Specialist’s First Year Of Private Billing
To make this concrete, here’s an illustrative example only, using rounded figures rather than anyone’s actual numbers. Dr Priya, an anaesthetist, moves from a public hospital staff specialist role into a mix of hospital sessions and private billing through her own company. In her first full year she generates 620,000 dollars in gross billings, with 140,000 dollars going to rooms, admin and equipment costs, leaving roughly 480,000 dollars before her own salary and tax.
Before she signs anything, her accountant needs to test that arrangement against the PSI rules, because if it’s found to be personal services income, that 480,000 dollars is attributed to her individually regardless of which entity banked it, and income splitting to a spouse who isn’t genuinely working in the practice isn’t available. Separately, if she salary sacrifices toward the 32,500 dollar concessional contributions cap that applies from 1 July 2026, her income and contributions together will sit well above the 250,000 dollar Division 293 threshold, meaning part of those contributions get taxed at an extra 15 percent rather than the usual concessional rate. Neither of these is a reason not to structure or contribute, they’re just numbers that need modelling before she commits, not discovered on her tax return the following year.
What Should This Advice Actually Cost, And What’s A Red Flag?
Fixed fee pricing is worth insisting on for the accounting and structuring side of this work, because a practice structure review or a PSI test doesn’t suit an open-ended hourly clock, and you should know the cost before you commit. Compare that fee against the alternative: a payroll tax audit or an ATO review reaching back several years, with interest and penalties, generally dwarfs several years of proper advice fees.
Licensed financial advice is usually priced differently, either as a flat advice fee for a Statement of Advice, an ongoing service fee, or a percentage of the funds under management once you’re invested. None of these is automatically wrong, but you should be told the fee in dollar terms before you agree to anything, and be wary of anyone who can only describe it as a percentage without translating that into what you’ll actually pay this year.
The clearest red flag is someone who claims to specialise in doctors but can’t explain, in their own words, how a PSI test works or what a relevant contract looks like for payroll tax purposes. If they’re reciting a definition rather than describing what they’ve actually reviewed, they haven’t done this work on a real medical practice before.
How Do You Check Someone Is Actually Qualified To Advise Doctors?
For the tax and structuring side, search the person’s name or the practice on the Tax Practitioners Board’s public register, which shows whether they’re currently registered and in good standing. For the investment and insurance side, search ASIC’s Financial Advisers Register via Moneysmart, which lists their licensee, qualifications and what they’re authorised to advise on.
Then ask them directly. Ask how they test whether income is PSI. Ask whether they’ve reviewed a medical practice’s contractor arrangements against payroll tax rules before, and what they found. Ask what a service trust arrangement needs to look like to survive scrutiny. A specific answer, drawn from actual client work, tells you more than any qualification listed on a register.
Where To Start This Week
If you’re newly billing privately, taking on your first associate agreement, or setting up a company or trust for the first time, the single most useful next step is a structure and PSI review before you sign anything, not after. That’s the point where a mistake is cheapest to avoid and most expensive to unwind later.
If your structure is already settled and the real question is what to do with surplus income, the next step is verifying a licensed adviser on the Financial Advisers Register and having that conversation, ideally with your accountant looped in so the investment strategy sits inside a structure that’s already sound.
RPS Accountants and Business Advisors works with GPs, specialists, dentists and allied health professionals across Melbourne’s northern suburbs on exactly the structuring and tax side of this equation. You can book a medical accounting review directly, and where your situation calls for licensed investment or insurance advice, that’s a separate, specifically licensed conversation we’ll point you toward rather than attempt ourselves.
This article is general information and doesn’t take your personal income, structure or super balance into account. Speak with an accountant who has actually reviewed medical practice arrangements before restructuring anything, and with a licensed financial adviser before acting on any investment or insurance decision.
Written by Ravi, Principal Accountant and Registered Tax Agent (TPB No. 26161185), RPS Accountants and Business Advisors, Epping.
