Moving to a SELARL as a dentist: the calculation that matters

No profit threshold automatically triggers the move. What decides is the share of the result the practitioner can durably leave inside the company without drawing it. As long as the whole profit is needed to live on, the company brings no saving and adds obligations. It becomes useful once a capacity to save or invest appears.

You read everywhere that you should cross 70,000, 80,000 or 100,000 EUR of profit. Those figures circulate from one site to another with no text and no study behind them. They are not wrong by accident: they are simply beside the point, because the decisive parameter is not profit.

In sole practice, profit is subject to income tax and to contributions whether you draw it or not. A practitioner generating 150,000 EUR and spending only 90,000 EUR is taxed on 150,000 EUR.

In a SELARL, the result is subject to corporation tax. Remuneration paid to the practitioner is deducted from the company's result and taxed in their hands. What stays inside bears corporation tax, at the reduced 15% rate up to 42,500 EUR of profit for companies meeting the conditions.

Hence the test: the gap between what the practice generates and what you need to live on. If that gap is nil, the company adds nothing. If it is material and lasting, it allows an investment to be funded, an acquisition debt to be repaid or cash to be built up at a lower tax cost.

Social protection. A majority manager of a SELARL is self-employed: contributions are lower, and so are entitlements. A SELAS president is treated as an employee, better covered and materially more expensive. The right question is not which costs least, but which level of cover matches your family and wealth situation.

Real complexity. Incorporating means leaving cash-basis bookkeeping and a form 2035 for accruals accounting, a balance sheet, a corporation tax return, shareholder meetings and public filing of accounts. Since the 5% tolerance ended, the manager's remuneration split must also be documented, which means keeping personal BNC accounts and filing a form 2035 as well. None of this is prohibitive, but it has a cost that belongs in the calculation.

The exit cost. A company is easy to create and far harder to unwind. Returning to sole practice means dissolution, liquidation and taxation of reserves. Incorporation should therefore be assessed over several years, not on one exceptional year.

Once the decision to incorporate is made, the choice of form turns on two points.

The director's social status, described above, which drives both the cost of contributions and the level of protection.

The treatment of dividends. In a SELARL, dividends received by the majority manager above a certain threshold attract social contributions. In a SELAS they escape contributions and bear the flat-rate withholding. A significant distribution policy therefore points towards a SELAS, and so does a need for stronger social cover, though at a higher contribution cost on remuneration.

Our view: the choice is rarely made on the numbers alone. A practitioner planning regular distributions with solid personal protection cover does not have the same priorities as a younger, indebted practitioner with dependent children.

Two structures are regularly confused with the SELARL.

An SCM is not a practising vehicle. It pools resources, premises, equipment and staff between practitioners who each keep their own patients and their own accounts. It answers a question of organisation and cost sharing, not a tax question.

An SPFPL is a holding company: it holds shares in a SELARL. It therefore comes afterwards, when the point is to organise an acquisition, channel dividends up or prepare a succession. It does not replace the practising company. Our article on the dental SPFPL holding sets out what that structure allows and what it does not.

This is the structure most often proposed on incorporation, and the most often misunderstood.

Contributing a patient base to a company controlled by the same practitioner is expressly excluded from the temporary deductible depreciation scheme. The contribution may still be relevant, for instance to prepare a partner's entry or to value the contribution to capital, but it will not produce the announced tax saving. It has to be decided on its real merits.

1. Establish the actual result of the last two years, adjusted for non-recurring items.
2. Cost the net living requirement, before discussing any structure.
3. Measure the gap between the two, and how stable it is over time.
4. Model both scenarios over five years, including contributions and social protection, not on a single year's tax.
5. Add the company's running cost and the exit cost to the calculation.
6. Check the plans: investment, partnership, succession. Those are what most often decide.

A director's remuneration simulator helps frame the trade-off, provided it is read as an order of magnitude rather than a decision.

Once the SELARL is in place, the next question is the remuneration split, now mandatory since the 5% tolerance ended. For the practice as a whole, see our dentist accountant page.

Updated 24 July 2026. Informative content reviewed by a chartered accountant registered with the Ordre des experts-comptables of Ile-de-France. It does not replace an analysis of your own situation.