Tax and Real Estate CPA Question

[Neil Kamdar]

Hi Everyone,

This is my first post on Bigger Pockets. Such a cool community. Currently, my wife and I have 2 rental properties in the Cleveland, OH area. We live in the Bay Area, CA. We recently set up an LLC and are in the process of transferring the deeds of the houses to the LLC. I had a few questions with how to best operate our finances as they pertain to our rental properties:

- I plan on creating a bank account for my LLC -- I know its important that people operate their LLC's completely separately. Is it customary to create one bank account that the mortgage/payments come from and rent deposits into. How do you prevent from piercing the corporate viel if you aim to deduct expenses that have come from your personal credit card (home office, travel..etc).

- Also any book recommendations for real estate llc's -- particularly focused on rental properties?

- Lastly, does anyone recommend a good real estate CPA in the Bay Area?  

Thank you for your help.

Cheers,

Neil

Furthermore, I was hoping someone could refer me to a Real Estate CPA in and around the Bay Area.  

[Andrew Weiner]

Hi Neil,

Just a few thoughts on your post.  You don't need a separate account for income and expenses (if that was the question, I wasn't 100% clear).  You can also open a business credit card with a personal guarantee,  that's a great way to separate business expenses and personal expenses.  Many of the cards also allow free additional users so you can have a different card for each property to allow for even easier tracking.  For the other expenses that you deduct, like internet or home office I would talk to your CPA about that, the rules and individual circumstances vary so much that I think its hard to give general advice on a forum.

When you make the change you should also be sure to notify your property insurance company and update the names on your utility bills.