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.
New York, provision by provision
New York
Strict: same-profession ownership only, no lay equityHolding: an ABA entity in New York must be a professional corporation, PLLC, or LLP, and every owner must be licensed under Article 167. No non-licensee, whether an individual investor, a management company, or an allied licensed professional, may hold equity in the clinical entity.
Yes. New York licenses Licensed Behavior Analysts and Certified Behavior Analyst Assistants under Article 167 of the Education Law, effective July 1, 2014, administered by NYSED's Office of the Professions. Only a person licensed, certified, or exempt under Article 167 may practice applied behavior analysis in New York.
Conclusion. ABA is a licensed profession in New York, the gateway that pulls it into every downstream entity rule that follows.
A licensee may form a professional corporation, a professional service limited liability company, or a registered limited liability partnership, but not an ordinary business corporation or LLC, to render applied behavior analysis services. Ownership of any of these entities is restricted entirely to persons licensed in the same profession under Article 167. There is no minority lay-ownership allowance of the kind some other states permit.
Conclusion. A professional entity is required, and ownership is restricted entirely to Article 167 licensees, with no room for a non-licensee or an allied-profession minority owner.
The rule reaches ABA by name, not by general category. New York's LLC Law and Business Corporation Law were amended to specifically address applied behavior analysis services as defined in Article 167, rather than relying on a general "professional service" definition that ABA might or might not fit into. This is a direct, unambiguous scope link.
Conclusion. ABA is expressly and specifically named in New York's professional-entity statutes, leaving no interpretive gap on whether the rule applies.
Ownership. New York's corporate-practice doctrine is unusually direct for ABA specifically: the professional-entity statutes name applied behavior analysis services and require every member or shareholder to be an Article 167 licensee, with no allied-profession or minority lay-ownership exception written into the ABA-specific provisions the way some other New York professions receive. A non-licensee, including a management company, a private-equity fund, or an individual investor, cannot hold direct equity in the clinical entity.
Clinical control. Because ownership itself is restricted to licensees, clinical control follows automatically; there is no separate doctrine needed to force licensed control of the practice, the entity statute does that work directly. New York does carry a narrower administrative pathway worth noting: NYSED maintains waiver provisions letting approved special-education schools and early-intervention provider agencies, which may deliver ABA among other services, contract with a PC or PLLC, or organize as an education corporation, under a different regulatory track than a private-pay clinical practice.
Conclusion. Ownership of an ABA professional entity in New York is restricted entirely to Article 167 licensees. No non-licensee may hold equity in the clinical entity outside the narrower special-education or early-intervention waiver track.
New York carries a general fee-splitting prohibition applicable to all NYSED-licensed professions: a licensed professional or professional firm may not share with anyone outside the firm's own members the fees earned for professional services. A narrower statute, Education Law Section 6509-a, separately prohibits referral-based fee-splitting for a specifically enumerated list of health professions; behavior analysts are not named in that enumerated list, but the general prohibition under Section 6509(9) and Regents Rule 29.1(b)(4) applies to every licensed profession under NYSED's jurisdiction, ABA included.
Conclusion. A management fee paid to an MSO by a New York ABA professional entity must not be structured as fee-splitting for referrals; it should be a defensible fair-market-value payment for actual management services, separate from any referral relationship.
ABA is a licensed profession in New York (axis one), and the professional-entity statutes name applied behavior analysis services directly, requiring a PC, PLLC, or LLP with membership restricted to Article 167 licensees (axes two and three). That ownership restriction functions as New York's corporate-practice doctrine for ABA; there is no separate common-law layer to analyze because the entity statute itself does the work, and clinical control follows ownership automatically (axis four). A general NYSED fee-splitting prohibition constrains management-fee structuring on top of the ownership rule (axis five). Therefore an ABA entity in New York must be a professional corporation, PLLC, or LLP, wholly owned by Article 167 licensees, with no non-licensee equity of any kind in the clinical entity.
Outlook: how this verdict could change
Likelihood of change: Low. New York's professional-entity rules for ABA are recently codified and specific by name, and there is no indication of pending legislation to loosen same-profession ownership. States with this level of statutory specificity tend to be the most durable, not the most likely to shift.
What to watch. Any amendment to LLC Law § 1203 or Business Corporation Law § 1507 touching applied behavior analysis, and any expansion of the special-education or early-intervention waiver pathway to reach private-pay clinical practice more broadly.
Disruption if it changes: High. Because ownership is currently all-or-nothing, licensee-only, any loosening (an allied-profession exception, a minority lay-ownership carve-out) would be a first-time structural option for New York operators rather than an incremental adjustment, and would likely trigger significant deal activity if it occurred.
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. New York's licensee-only ownership rule is also one of the least forgiving in this guide for a private-equity or outside-capital structure; the workaround used in other strict states, a clinician-owned professional entity paired with an investor-owned management company, requires especially careful fee-splitting analysis here given the general NYSED prohibition. 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 New York 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 New York code and qualified New York counsel are the authoritative sources. Neither this page nor any secondary source should be relied on in place of direct verification and professional advice.