STRs as a married couple, tax strategy

[Eric Sato]

Hi! My wife and I are hoping to close on a SFH soon with the intent on doing an STR! I have a tax question / real estate professional question.

I myself have a W2 job and my wife is a stay-at-home mom (no income). My thought was that it would be best if she does the primary STR work and log her hours and ensure that she spends more time on the STR than I do (at least officially logged hours... since I will most likely always be thinking about the STR... haha).

I am trying to find the most relevant information for our strategy to ensure we get the best joint tax deduction options against MY W2 income.

Is the following strategy correct?

- I maintain my W2 income job

- My wife does the primary amount of work on the STR and logs 150+ hours in a calendar year (I see 100 hours listed in some sites, and 150 in others...)

- We file our taxes as joint / married

- Her tax deduction benefits from qualifying as a real estate professional from the STR can offset my W2 income.

- She can use REPSTRACKER for this

I then of course have a plethora of other questions in terms of book keeping (tracking all purchases etc...) but I will save those for another time unless someone has the best offline resources I can start to learn from? 

Cheers!