Hi,I am looking for a RE CPA hopefully with bookkeeping service as well.

I personally use Quickbooks to track my rental items.However, excel is more than sufficient if you are just starting out and don't want to spend the money for an accountant/bookkeeper.

Many of the items you are asking about should be fine to write off but it sounds like you need to find a good bookkeeper and/or CPA to give you some guidance here.

Payroll, bookkeeping, etc can mostly be done remotely.Here is a great list of questions to ask a potential accountant:http://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/51/topics/70447-questions-to-ask-a-cpaAlso check out the www.NAEA.org page in your search.

What do you do for book keeping for your first rentals?

My goal is to protect assets, minimize liability and the threat of litigation and become anonymous/less visible individually without creating a structure that is a nightmare to manage from an accounting, bookkeeping and legal perspective.I have certainly thought about one or more LLC's in Delaware, a Wyoming cocktail(this name may be incorrect), a C corp., etc.

I'm a Virtual Assistant, I specialize in Virtual Administrative Services, Virtual Bookkeeping and Internet Marketing.

Additionally, there are other reasons to create multiple companies, the nature of the business of each may be different leading to different tax treatments, or if you do 1031 Exchange through an entity, that entity can't be the one that you flip houses in (I learned this from Bill Horan of the Realty Exchange Corporation).From an accounting standpoint, this is a bookkeeping nightmare.

Each have pros and cons - with a salary the tax is taken up front but requires more bookkeeping for the corp.

I have been in the landlord business since 2011 and began using Quickbooks around 2018 for securing rent payments and book keeping purposes.