Professionals
Accountants for Professional Practices
Clarke McEwan advises principals and practice managers across law, engineering, consulting, architecture and allied professional disciplines — from growing regional firms to established city-based practices operating across multiple offices.
Running a professional practice involves a different set of financial pressures and opportunities to most businesses. Revenue is highly dependent on people, not assets. Profitability turns on utilization rates, fee recovery, write-offs and lock-up — metrics that require informed analysis, not just year-end compliance. Partner structures, profit-sharing arrangements and equity transitions are complex, and the personal financial goals of each principal are tied directly to how the practice is structured and run.
Clarke McEwan has advised professional practices for over 30 years. We understand the commercial dynamics of your sector, and we work as a genuine advisory partner — not simply as a tax agent you hear from once a year.
Who We Work With
- Legal practices — from boutique law firms to multi-partner commercial law firms
- Engineering and infrastructure consultancies
- Architecture and design practices
- Management, strategy and IT consulting firms
- Surveying and town planning practices
- Financial advisory practices seeking external advisory support
- Other licensed and regulated professional service businesses
- Building Approval and Certification groups
We act for sole practitioners, partnerships, legal practices, professional services trusts, and larger multi-director corporate structures. Whether your practice turns over $500,000 or $15 million, the advice we provide is scaled to your complexity and growth stage.
What We Do for Professional Practices
Practice Financial Management
We go beyond tax compliance to help principals understand the real drivers of practice profitability — including WIP and debtor management, cost recovery, overhead structure, and fee rate adequacy. We can benchmark your practice against comparable businesses and help you identify where the numbers are telling you something important.
Tax Planning and Structure
Professional practices commonly operate through trusts, service entities, or professional corporations. Getting the right structure in place — and keeping it appropriate as the practice grows — is central to minimizing tax and protecting both business and personal assets. We advise on the right combination of entities for your circumstances, including salary packaging, Division 7A implications, fringe benefits tax, and superannuation optimization for principals.
Partner and Principal Advisory
Equity transitions — whether admitting a new partner, buying out a retiring principal, or restructuring profit-sharing — require careful planning from both a tax and commercial perspective. Our team advise on the financial mechanics of partnership changes, valuations, goodwill treatment, and the personal tax consequences for each party involved.
Succession and Exit Planning
For many professional practice principals, the practice is their largest asset. We work with clients well in advance of retirement or sale to structure the exit in the most tax-effective way possible — including the application of small business CGT concessions, superannuation contribution strategies, and the structuring of sale or handover arrangements.
Personal Wealth and Asset Protection
We provide individual tax and financial structuring advice for each practice principal, including investment property, SMSF, and personal risk management. Your personal financial position and your practice finances are interconnected — we advise across both.
Why Clarke McEwan
Professional practices have specific needs that a generalist accounting firm is rarely equipped to meet in depth. Our team has long experience advising practices of different types and sizes, and we provide practical, commercially oriented advice — not just technical answers.
We operate from offices in Maroochydore on the Sunshine Coast and in Brisbane's Milton precinct, with video conference and digital document capabilities for clients anywhere in Queensland.
