Accounting/Tax: Reading real estate books to be a "professional"

[Soh Tanaka]

Accounting/tax questions:

Many of us know that in order to qualify as a real estate professional status, one of the things you have to do is you have to perform more than 750 hours of services during the tax year in real property trades or businesses in which you materially participated.

Would the time reading books related to real estate count as part of the 750 hours?

[Eamonn McElroy]

@Daniel Dietz

Daniel, quite a while ago you mentioned the rates you pay your CPA for all of your returns, of which you had a respectable number.  I mentioned something along the lines of "the fees seem very low, but if you are otherwise satisfied with the services, great".  I, and other tax professionals active on this sub-forum were chastised a great deal in this thread.

May I ask you why you feel the need to ask these specific-fact specific questions to CPAs who you don't have an engagement with if you are satisfied with your CPA?