The five rows below carry the operative statutory language verbatim, each quote pulled from the official code. This page is one state from the full state-by-state reference. Nothing here is legal, tax, or financial advice.
The five-part test in brief
Whether an ABA practice needs a professional entity is a stack of five questions. The licensing act is the gateway, because an unlicensed profession is generally not a professional service and an ordinary entity governs. The professional-entity statute supplies the form and the ownership rule that applies if that form is used. The scope definition decides whether ABA is actually inside that statute. The corporate-practice doctrine, a separate body of law that often lives in the medical practice act or case law rather than the entity statute, is usually what forces licensed ownership and pushes outside capital into a management company. And the fee-splitting and anti-remuneration rules constrain management-fee economics even where ownership is open. The rows below run those five against this state's actual code, quoting the operative language so the position rests on the statute.
Florida, provision by provision
Florida
Nuanced: open for ABA-only outside Medicaid; Health Care Clinic Act governs the restHolding: a non-licensee may generally own a standard Florida LLC delivering ABA-only services, since no dedicated license exists to trigger Chapter 621. The real ownership constraint is the Health Care Clinic Act, which turns on Medicaid enrollment and, for non-Medicaid practices, a medical or clinical director requirement rather than a blanket licensed-ownership rule.
No dedicated license exists. A provider qualifies either through certification under Section 393.17(2), verified by the Agency for Persons with Disabilities against BACB certification, or through a separate Chapter 490 or 491 license (psychology, clinical social work, marriage and family therapy, or mental health counseling) that covers ABA within its existing scope.
Conclusion. ABA is not a licensed profession in Florida in the sense the professional-entity statutes contemplate; it runs on a certification-or-alternate-license structure instead, which changes how the gateway question below actually resolves.
Chapter 621, the Professional Service Corporation and Limited Liability Company Act, requires professionals whose service "requires as a condition precedent to the rendering of such service the obtaining of a license" to use a professional association or professional LLC rather than a standard entity, with ownership restricted to persons licensed to render that same professional service. Because APD certification under Section 393.17(2) is a program-specific credentialing standard rather than a state-issued professional license, an ABA-only practitioner who is not also Chapter 490/491-licensed does not clearly meet the "obtaining of a license" trigger, leaving Chapter 621's mandatory professional-entity requirement inapplicable to that practitioner.
Conclusion. No mandatory professional entity applies to an ABA-only practitioner whose sole credential is APD certification under Section 393.17(2), since that certification is not clearly the kind of "license" Chapter 621's definition is built around. A Chapter 490/491-licensed practitioner performing ABA within that license's scope is a different case, and Chapter 621 does reach that license directly.
The scope link depends entirely on which of Florida's two credentialing tracks a practitioner uses. For the Chapter 490/491 track, the answer is unambiguous: those are licensed professions squarely within Chapter 621's definition, and a psychologist, clinical social worker, or counselor performing ABA within that license's scope organizes through the same professional entity rules that already govern their primary license. For the APD-certification track, the scope link is genuinely uncertain, since "other legal authorization" in Section 621.03(1) is broad enough that a court could read it to include a state-agency-administered certification requirement, but no case law squarely resolves the question for behavior analysis specifically.
Conclusion. Chapter 490/491-licensed practitioners performing ABA are inside Chapter 621 through their underlying license. Pure APD-certification-only practitioners sit in a genuinely unresolved zone rather than a clearly settled "no."
Ownership. The provision that actually does the ownership-restricting work in Florida is not Chapter 621, it is the Health Care Clinic Act. Certain clinic types must be owned by licensed physicians, dentists, chiropractors, or their immediate family members under Sections 400.990 to 400.995, and a 2020 law change exempted ABA group practices enrolled in Florida Medicaid from Health Care Clinic Act licensure entirely. A non-Medicaid ABA practice generally still needs either the Chapter 400 clinic license, with a state-licensed medical or clinical director, or a separate statutory exemption, such as the exemption for practices wholly owned by licensed health care practitioners.
Clinical control. For a Medicaid-enrolled ABA group practice, Florida imposes no clinic-director or physician-ownership requirement at all, since the 2020 exemption removes it. For a non-Medicaid practice without another exemption, the Health Care Clinic Act's medical or clinical director requirement is the operative clinical-control mechanism, not a corporate-practice-of-medicine common-law doctrine.
Conclusion. Ownership is generally open for a Medicaid-enrolled ABA group practice, since the Health Care Clinic Act exemption removes the clinic-licensure and director requirement entirely. A non-Medicaid ABA practice without a separate exemption faces the Chapter 400 clinic-licensure and medical-director requirement, which is the real constraint, not a Chapter 621 professional-entity rule.
Florida's fee-splitting exposure runs through two statutes tied to health care providers generally: Section 456.054 prohibits kickbacks, rebates, or other remuneration for patient referrals, and Section 817.505, the Patient Brokering Act, imposes felony penalties for the same conduct. Whether these reach an APD-certification-only ABA provider, as opposed to a Chapter 490/491-licensed one, again turns on how broadly "health care provider" is read; a Chapter 490/491-licensed practitioner is squarely covered. Any practice billing Medicaid or a federal health care program is separately and fully subject to the federal Anti-Kickback Statute regardless of how the state statutes are read.
Conclusion. A management agreement should be priced at fair market value to satisfy the federal anti-kickback framework in every case, and to satisfy Sections 456.054 and 817.505 wherever a Chapter 490/491-licensed practitioner is part of the ownership or referral chain.
ABA is not a dedicated licensed profession in Florida; it runs on APD certification or an alternate Chapter 490/491 license (axis one). Chapter 621's mandatory professional-entity requirement is built around a licensure "condition precedent," which the Chapter 490/491 track clearly satisfies but the APD-certification track does not clearly satisfy (axes two and three). The real ownership constraint is the Health Care Clinic Act, which is open for Medicaid-enrolled ABA group practices and requires a clinic license and medical or clinical director for most others (axis four). Fee-splitting exposure under state law tracks the same Chapter 490/491 versus APD-certification distinction, with the federal anti-kickback framework applying regardless (axis five). Therefore ownership in Florida is generally open for an APD-certified, Medicaid-enrolled ABA-only practice, and turns on Health Care Clinic Act compliance for practices outside that combination.
Outlook: how this verdict could change
Likelihood of change: Moderate. Florida's two-track credentialing structure and its Medicaid-conditioned Health Care Clinic Act exemption have already changed once, in 2020, and the underlying question of whether Chapter 621 reaches APD certification has never been squarely tested in court, leaving room for a different reading to emerge.
What to watch. Any amendment to Section 400.9905's Health Care Clinic Act exemption, any Florida licensure bill creating a dedicated behavior-analyst license, which would resolve the Chapter 621 ambiguity by giving the statute an unambiguous license to attach to, and any court decision interpreting "other legal authorization" under Section 621.03(1) in a behavior-analysis context.
Disruption if it changes: Moderate. A new dedicated license would most likely pull ABA cleanly into Chapter 621's professional-entity framework, similar to the Chapter 490/491 track today, which would meaningfully tighten the ownership picture for the APD-certification-only segment of the market.
Where professional advice is essential, not optional
Verbatim statutory text is a starting point, not a conclusion. Statutes are amended, agencies issue rules that fill them in, and courts interpret them. Florida's payor-mix dependency is the sharpest trap here: a practice that starts open and Medicaid-exempt can become Health Care Clinic Act-exposed the moment its client mix shifts toward private pay, without any change in its underlying credentialing. Use this page to locate the operative provisions and to speak from the source, then confirm the current text and citations against the official code and engage qualified Florida counsel before acting. Nothing here is legal, tax, or financial advice.
The provisions quoted here change and are interpreted by agencies and courts, and Florida's Health Care Clinic Act exemption is conditioned on Medicaid participation in a way that can shift with a practice's payor mix. The official Florida code and qualified Florida counsel are the authoritative sources. Neither this page nor any secondary source should be relied on in place of direct verification and professional advice.