Unknown/variable risks scare me, and many others like me.I focus less on the "risk" of leverage at least in these types of discussions, because it is something I know and understand the likely situations and outcomes of much better.I can model what would happen to my cashflow, net worth, balance sheet, etc. based on my leverage and various changes to market conditions.I cannot model what would happen to my cashflow, net worth, balance sheet, etc. in the face of major lawsuit with unknown attributes and outcomes.

There is a quote above attributed to a Sean O'Toole that seems to be one that perpetuates a myth about IRS liens that I have heard from some gurus.  

If it's much, much lower, to what would you attribute that?

I would prefer not live in a place that has either of those two attributes.

The Credit Repair Organizations Act specifically prohibits charging customers until AFTER credit repair services have been rendered.They will charge you monthly fees and attribute them to anything OTHER than credit repair for that reason.They will limit you to the removal of only so many items a month.

There are obviously attribution rules for these purposes.The "control test" is met for the "majority" of the tax year.The businesses share the same tax year.None of the businesses may be SSTBs [Specified Service Trade or Business].The businesses to be aggregated much satisfy two of the following three factors: They must provide products or services that are the same or customarily offered together;They must share facilities or significant centralized business elements, such as personnel, accounting, legal, manufacturing, purchasing, human resources, or information technology resources; orThe businesses are operated in coordination with, or reliance upon, one or more of the businesses in the aggregated group."

Are you aware that the day your dollar went off the gold standard it became useless except for the fiat value that we attribute to it.

In addition, while I know you are not self-employed if you are self-employed with no full-time employees you may wish to consider opening a Solo 401k instead of a self-directed IRA as it has several advantages over an IRA LLC such as much higher contribution limits, direct checkbook control (i.e. no need to have the account at a specialty trust company), ability to take a 401k loan, exclusion from unrelated debt finance income tax with respect to investment in real estate acquired with non-recourse financing, etc.In addition, please note if you purchase debt-financed real estate with your IRA, unrelated debt finance income tax should apply to the income attributable to debt-financed real estate held by your IRA.

After the initial investment, current interpretations of the prohibited transaction "attribution" rules suggest that a later investment by the IRA under these circumstances would be a prohibited transaction anyway. 

Since I'm not a flipper (more buy and hold), this Schedule C WILL NEVER SEE A PROFIT (despite the company being profitable) because the associated income from the rental properties is reported on Schedule E and the expenses from depreciation associated with tools/phone system, org costs, etc. are all Sch C attributable and not allocable to Sch E.