Mom & Pop.. not Trump

[Jay J.]

Hello Tax experts!  I have a question.  (and I know nothing about RE taxes)

I'm sure most people have heard the latest headline about D. Trump and his (almost) a billion dollar loss that (presumably) he carried forward to avoid taxes. So, with that in mind..

Say you're a small time "Mom & Pop" type investor. Maybe you have less than 10 properties that you self manage.  You carry some debt on the properties (for the sake of argument, we'll say %50) and they generate decent CF income. 

Is there anything about what Trump (presumably) did that the 'average mom & pop' investor can take advantage of? Would the owner of said properties need to have them in a LLC? or something else? is there a dollar amount / # of properties that needs to be reached??

Obviously, not on that scale, and I'm not looking to screw my local municipality out of tax money (I honestly have no issue paying taxes), but what are some of these 'little known tricks & loopholes' that apparently only the rich know about. 

I hope this even makes sense, and I'm sorry if this question is super broad. :-/

[Chris Mason]

I'm doing a mortgage right now for a self employed person showing $0.00 on line 12 of page 1 of their tax returns, and $0.00 on line 31 of Schedule C. She is not a "1%er." She is an artist. Net loss carryover exists for "mom and pops" too. No day-job, that Schedule C thing is her job.

Also, while on the subject, as soon as a lender asks a self-employed person what their adjusted gross income is, the self employed REI or homebuyer should just go ahead and hang up the phone immediately. Conversation done, find a new lender. Me doing a mortgage for someone with $0.00 in taxable income should tell you that Fannie/Freddie mortgages are not based on taxable AGI, that's just the lazy way to say "no" to borrowers who require actual attention to detail and work to close their loan.