All Forum Posts by: Cameron Skinner

Every state is different but most states he would have had to file a notice to owner within a certain time of starting usually 60 or 90days, if you don't owe the money usually you can put up the money or a bond with the clerk of the court to get lien released then he has to file a law suit within usually 30 days for the money or its released back too you.  Honestly it will cost him more than 6k in attourney fees to file a case like this.  Further filing a fraudulent lien usually has punitive damages in FL its triple damages. 

Hope this helps good luck!

@Russell Brazil If you have multiple properties and multiple real estate activities and wish to qualify as a real estate professional, you need to add a statement to your return to combine your activities as a single activity.  Since it is almost impossible to meet the material and actively participation rules for each activity separatly.

This statement should explicitly declare that the taxpayer is a qualifying taxpayer (i.e., I ____  meet the requirements to be a real estate professional for the tax year and am making the election to treat all my real estate activities as a single activity under Sec. 469(c)(7)(A).

Hope this helps good luck!

I have a "management company" separate LLC that I run all my rents and expenses through. Then I have separate "classes" in quickbooks for each individual property so I can break them up for tax purposes. If you set your classes up correctly you can run individual reports per property or as a global report, or even different groupings. Managing 17 bank accounts seems cumbersome and think about logging in and out of each account to post separate rents received and constantly haveing to move money around to cover expenses. If I have a partner on a specific project I do run a completely separate company and bank account for that business.

"You can't improve what you don't measure" so it's essential to have acurate data and good reports per project. 

Hope this helps' good luck!

@Dave Toelkes I know a lot of articles online say that, but someone wrote it and people just copied it without checking it. but if you read the regs IRS basically says for a married couple to treat LLC as disregarded the actual LLC and its underlying assets have to be considered community property in that state where the couple live. Then the regs and publications list the obvious states that are community property states, but the regs go on to describe what is considered community property. Those articles just site the listed states. I don't want to get too far into the weeds on this. But Florida is an equitable distribution state, but it's laws regarding community property for assets acquired during the marriage do qualify and meet the IRS guidelines. You do need some specific language in your operational agreement to handle in the case of a divorce, but any decent attorney can handle that. You can read IRS publication 555 page 3 "community or separate property and income, and then read about equitable distribution law in Florida.

Hope this helps, good luck 

Your commute to work is not deductible, IRS has interpreted this in your type business to mean you first trip to the job sit, or "business activity" and trip home is not deductsble.  But once at that first business activity, then any trips to the bank, hardware store, post office other job sites, are deductible soyou can be creative.  I knew a business owner who had to take cash to night deposit box at bank after work every night, he passed 3 branches closer to go to a branch near his house.  This way he could writ off his miles to the bank evey night, but not the milage from the bank to home, he would do the same in reverse to the post office business PO box every morning. 

Hope this helps, good luck

Any bank can set up an account for a Series LLC just take your Articles of organization and Federal EIN # if you don't have one go to IRS.gov and they have an online registration or fill out IRS form SS-4 and mail or fax in.

Hope this helps good luck

@Dave Toelkes the post started asking about the use of a LLC as a pass through entity, IRS allows you to treat a single member LLC as a "disregarded entity" and a married couple in some states depending on the laws concerning joint property.

Congrats!

Who flunks first grade?!

Well they said I didn't really fail, they just held me back, but it still felt like I flunked. I have severe dyslexia and had it before anyone ever knew what dyslexia was. While your brain easily sees "96" it's like my mind picks the characters off the page and rotates them in every direction so my mind flips through "96" "69" "66" "99" until it settles back on 96. While this only takes less than a second in my brain, when I have to do this with every letter in a word and every number it dramatically slows my reading and timed math test. Further it makes memorizing spelling words near impossible. So eventually the school system put me in the "special class" for help. The other students openly called it the Dumb Class, but in reality very few kids were there with academic deficiencies. The Dumb Class turned out to be more of a dumping ground for kids with severe behavioral and emotional disorders. Since I was a relatively easy kid they just left me alone to play on the computer all day.

Lucky for me I have the toughest Mom within the next four States. She saw a program on 60 minutes where school districts were placing students unnecessarily in these programs to get additional funding from Federal Programs and instead of using the funds to help us they padded the general budget and just let us slip even further behind. My Mom believed I wasn't mentally slow, just struggled to read quickly and believed I could overcome this with extra help. We had a conference with the school administration and I remember, with me in the room, the counselor saying my mom needed to accept the fact that I was mentally deficient. He said I would never be able to attend college, and they needed to keep me in the "special" program to give me any hope of eventually graduating high school. You need to remember 30 years ago teachers and school administrators were highly respected authority figures and my Mom with only a high school education of her own was trying to tell these highly educated professionals they were wrong. I sat there as they pressured her, but she was relentless and demanded I be placed back in regular classes.
 

It was hard but my Mom would constantly drill me on spelling and she would read to me my reading assignments. I got lots of Cs and Ds in grade school but some how always squeezed through to the next grade. When I got into high school where comprehension and content became more important than spelling and speed, I began to do better. I would go on to graduated from FSU and get a Masters in Business at Troy State. I built a real-estate investment company with over 100 doors before the age of 40.  I use to even hang a sign under my Masters Degree in my office "the smartest kid in the dumb class" until my Mom pulled it off.

I learned how to work around my dyslexia and in many respects it has become an asset. Being able to easily see something in every direction, mirrored, and upside down allows me more visual creativity and see 2D construction plans in 3D spaces. In a strange irony, I believe my dyslexia has became an essential part of my success. But I sometimes think back and wonder how my life would be different if my mom had relented to the experts. Obviously my options and opportunities would have been severely limited and could I have overcome the blow to my confidence, if I was left believing everyone including my own Mom thought I was mentally deficient.

It got me to thinking, Moms are much more than the ladies who give birth to us and even more than the women who take care of us while we are young. A Mom is someone who believes in you, even when all the experts tell her she is wrong. She has confidence in your ability to overcome obstacles that defy all logic. She is the one who never gives up on you even after everyone else has. While others see flaws and deficiencies in you, she sees a unique individual, beautifully and perfectly designed by God. Happy Mother's Day to my Mom and a all the Moms out there who always kept believing in us.

You may need to file a tangible personal property tax return for any appliances blinds furniture, ect in your rental.  There is an automatic 25k exemption but some county tax collectors still require you to file a form to request the exemption.  Google your county tax collector website and just call them, usually a quick one page form to file for exemption.

Hope this helps good luck!