"real estate professional" designation

[Stephen Sawrie]

so i have read and researched this designation for some time now, and even obtained good info from one of the forums' resident tax experts Steven Hamilton, II, but i am just curious how many out there are actually using it?  most of the BP articles i read simply state that if you spend >750 hours in real estate per year you can use this awesome tax loophole, but as i dive deeper this designation seems incredibly complicated and almost guaranteed to invite an audit the way i want to use it, which is to designate my non-working spouse (who spent at least 750 hours on this stuff last year), with whom i file jointly, as our "real estate professional."

would love to hear others' experiences....