How many clients do you need to take home £30,000?

The figure most therapists work back from when they ask whether private practice can replace a salary. Here is the caseload it takes — and why it costs proportionally less tax than any larger target.

£30,000 is usually the first number a therapist works back from, because it is roughly what "can I actually do this full-time?" comes down to. The answer is not £30,000 divided by your fee: running costs, income tax and Class 4 National Insurance all come out first. At £60 a session it takes 15 clients a week — a real caseload, but not a punishing one — and this is the only target on this list that stays comfortably inside the basic-rate band.

Clients a week needed to take home £30,000

Why £30,000 take-home costs less tax than you expect

Reaching it means £41,400 of gross fees and £37,800 of taxable profit once £300 a month of running costs comes out. On that profit you pay £5,046 of income tax and £1,514 of Class 4 National Insurance — an effective rate of 17% of profit. The first £12,570 is covered by the personal allowance and everything above it is still taxed at 20%, so nothing here touches the higher-rate band. That is the lowest effective rate of any target in this set: at £60,000 take-home it is 29%.

In practice that means setting aside about £10 of every £60 session, or £547 a month.

The caseload, and one deadline it stays clear of

15 clients a week at £60, or 11 at £80, across 46 working weeks — the 6 weeks left over are your holiday and sick leave, which is the assumption most published earnings figures quietly leave out.

There is also a threshold worth knowing about. Making Tax Digital for Income Tax is phased in by gross income, not profit. The £41,400 of fees behind this target brings you into MTD from April 2027 — a year later than every larger target on this list, all of which are caught from April 2026.

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