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.
Hawaii, provision by provision
Hawaii
Ownership openHolding: a non-licensee may own an ordinary Hawaii corporation or LLC that employs licensed behavior analysts. The Professional Corporation Act's definition of professional service enumerates specific licensing chapters and omits chapter 465D, so ABA is not a professional service under the Act and no professional corporation is required or available for it on that basis. There is no corporate-practice-of-medicine statute reaching behavior analysts, and management-fee economics are constrained only by anti-remuneration rules.
This matters because the entire professional-entity analysis applies only to a licensed profession. Hawaii licenses behavior analysts under HRS chapter 465D, enacted in 2015 and administered by the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, which issues the license to an applicant who has passed the Board Certified Behavior Analyst examination and maintains active BACB certification. The identity of the licensing chapter, 465D and not the medical chapter 465, is the fact that controls the scope link in axis three.
Hawaii's professional entities live in the Professional Corporation Act at HRS chapter 415A. The Act supplies an optional corporate form for the professions it covers and defines who may own the resulting entity. The decisive feature for ABA is not the ownership rule but the Act's scope definition, which is a closed list of licensing chapters, examined in axis three. Where a profession is outside that list, the Act simply does not apply, and an ordinary corporation or LLC governs.
The scope link is decisive in Hawaii. The Professional Corporation Act defines professional service by enumerating specific licensing chapters, and chapter 465D, under which behavior analysts are licensed, is not among them. Chapter 465, the medical chapter, is listed, but it is a different chapter from 465D. Because behavior analysis is not a professional service under the Act, an ABA practice cannot be compelled into a professional corporation on that basis, and no professional-entity requirement reaches it.
The ownership conclusion follows directly from the scope finding in axis three, and it rests on the absence of any independent doctrine to fill the gap. Hawaii has no freestanding corporate-practice-of-medicine statute; the ownership restriction that exists for medicine operates through the Professional Corporation Act, which channels the enumerated professions, chapter 465 among them, into licensee-owned professional corporations. Behavior analysis is licensed under chapter 465D, which the Act's scope list omits, so the mechanism that restricts ownership for enumerated professions simply never engages for ABA. There is no separate common-law or statutory corporate-practice doctrine standing behind the Act to reach the profession another way. A non-licensee may therefore own an ordinary Hawaii entity that employs licensed behavior analysts, because the only ownership-restricting mechanism in the state, the Professional Corporation Act, does not list the profession.
Open ownership does not mean open economics. Hawaii's profession-specific fee-splitting bars sit in the medical and other practice acts and reach those licensees, and the insurance-code fee-splitting prohibition quoted here is scoped to motor-vehicle personal-injury-protection claims rather than health care generally, so neither reaches an ordinary ABA practice on its own terms. The operative constraints on an ABA practice are instead Hawaii's Medicaid fraud provisions and the federal anti-kickback statute, which reaches any provider billing Medicaid or Medicare and prohibits remuneration to induce referrals. The insurance-code provision is quoted because it states Hawaii's clearest statutory expression of the fee-splitting concept, that paying or accepting a portion of a fee or a commission in return for a referral is prohibited, but the enforceable constraint on an ABA practice's management fee comes from the Medicaid and federal rules. The practical consequence is the one common to every open-ownership state: the management fee must be fixed at fair market value for services actually rendered, not set as a share of clinical revenue or keyed to patient volume or referrals, because a percentage-of-revenue fee is exactly the arrangement the Medicaid and federal statutes police.
Reading the five together: ABA is a licensed profession in Hawaii under chapter 465D (axis one), the Professional Corporation Act supplies an optional form for the professions it covers (axis two), the Act's scope list omits chapter 465D so ABA is not a professional service under it (axis three), there is no corporate-practice statute reaching behavior analysts (axis four), and the only live constraint is the anti-remuneration rules that reach Medicaid and Medicare providers (axis five). Therefore a non-licensee may own an ordinary Hawaii corporation or LLC that employs licensed behavior analysts.
This entity question sits alongside the other state analyses in the entity decision pillar and the broader ABA compliance knowledge base: how Hawaii handles professional entity formation and management and ownership structures, its licensing regime, the facility and records rules, and its Medicaid enrollment framework each carry part of the picture.
Outlook: how this verdict could change
Likelihood of change: Low. Hawaii has licensed behavior analysts since 2015 under a chapter deliberately kept separate from the medical chapter, and the Professional Corporation Act's scope list would have to be amended to add 465D before the entity question changed.
What to watch. Any amendment to HRS 415A-2 adding chapter 465D to the enumerated professions; none is pending.
Disruption if it changes: Moderate. Adding 465D to the Act would make the professional-corporation form applicable and could introduce a single-profession ownership constraint.
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, so the corporate-practice and fee-splitting questions in particular often turn on interpretation rather than the words on the page. Use this page to locate the operative provisions and to speak from the source, then confirm the current text against the official code and engage qualified Hawaii counsel before acting. Nothing here is legal, tax, or financial advice.
The provisions quoted here change and are interpreted by agencies and courts. The official Hawaii code and qualified Hawaii counsel are the authoritative sources. Neither this page nor any secondary source should be relied on in place of direct verification and professional advice.