Fractional CFO CostWhat a full-time CFO costs a small company
You're looking for what a full-time CFO costs a small company, so that you can set it beside a fractional fee. Tax CFO Steven Palmieri leads this practice, and Steven and his team will show the arithmetic with every input named. We don't claim that a fractional fee is lower in every case. We only show how the full-time number is built.
Ask about the math
The pay itself
The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics reports a median annual wage of $166,570 for financial managers in May 2025. Treat that carefully. The category covers controllers, treasurers, credit managers, cash managers, risk managers and insurance managers across companies of every size. A small company might pay less or more depending on its location and the person. It's a starting reference, not a quote.
What the employer adds on top
An employer pays its own share of payroll taxes. In 2026, that's 6.2 percent for Social Security on wages up to $184,500, and 1.45 percent for Medicare on all wages. Federal unemployment tax is 6.0 percent on the first $7,000 of each employee's wages, and a state credit of up to 5.4 percent usually brings that to 0.6 percent.
The benefits share
Wages are only part of what an employer spends. For private industry workers overall, the BLS reported that wages and salaries made up 70.0 percent of employer compensation costs in June 2026, and benefits made up 30.0 percent. Benefits in that survey include required items like the payroll taxes above, plus insurance, paid leave and retirement contributions.
A made-up example that adds it up
Suppose a company hires someone at exactly the national median above. This is a constructed example, not a forecast. On that salary, the employer's Social Security share is about $10,300 and the Medicare share is about $2,400. The federal unemployment piece is tiny, around $42 with the full state credit. Those are part of the benefits share, not extra to it.
If wages are 70 percent of total compensation cost, as in the BLS figure for private industry overall, then a $166,570 wage points to roughly $238,000 in total yearly cost. That figure is an estimate built from an overall ratio. A real company's number depends on its own benefits.
The costs that never reach a paycheck
Recruiting a senior finance person takes time or a fee. Software and tools cost money. Someone has to manage the new hire, set goals and check the work. And a full-time person needs enough to do. If the company has twenty hours of CFO work, the other twenty hours still cost the same.
What this does and does not tell you
It tells you how a full-time number is built and what goes into it. It doesn't tell you that fractional costs less. That depends on the work you need and what a quote includes. Some companies have enough CFO work to fill a full-time role, and for them hiring is the right call. The question of when to hire is a different one from this page, which is only about the cost.
If you're weighing both paths, how fractional CFOs charge shows the other side of the comparison. And whether a fractional CFO is worth it looks at the decision itself.
Inside the fee. For this page's subject, a fractional fee should be compared with the whole cost of a hire, not just the salary, and it should show what work it covers so the two sides match.
Weighing a full-time hire against a fractional fee?
You will be talking to the Steven Palmieri practice.