A few LLC and tax questions

[Rick Price]

Myself and a partner are in the process of setting up our LLC and came across a few questions. I personally am new to real estate, while my partner has a 4 plex as well as a rent house. We plan on doing flips and rentals as the time goes on and if things go well.

For one, we plan to split things 50/50 at this time.  However we are wondering what, if any, tax benefits may arise from putting both of our wives on (or leaving them off) and splitting things in 25% increments?  Whether or not they will do 25% of the work or not is another topic, but we both suspect not!

From this, we wondered if we could write off more of my personal house for tax purposes if for example, i had a dedicated office in the house for A, B, C duties and could write off another portion of the house if my wife had a dedicated office for X, Y, Z duties but still all under the same LLC? I guess the same could be accomplished with automobiles and other typical tax write offs.

In summary, what might advantages or disadvantages of leaving the wives off on putting them on the LLC?

[Costin I.]

@Rick Price If you planning a partnership, I suggest you read this post (and my contribution there): taking-on-partner-s-and-limiting-our-liabilites. For a variety of reasons, you might also want to form an LLC to partner with your partner LLC. That's in regards to partnering.

For taxes and asset protection, depends on what you are planning to do - rentals, property management, flipping. Main ideas are: separate active income (flipping) from passive income (renting), separate asset holding (renting) from operations (property management). If you have a job, but wife doesn't, she can qualify for RE professional and deduct beyond the 25K loses, and might be able to get a salary, establish Solo 401K and health plan, etc.  

Here is a diagram I made to help navigate some of the questions related to LLC and asset protection. But your situation seems more complicated, so I advise you to watch bp-podcast-109/ and talk with @Scott Smith.