In particular, the operating agreement of the LLC can function as the business plan for your venture (profit allocation, distribution, voting rights, etc).

Doing this would really only consolidate incoming rents and outgoing maintenance fees to one name and account and could then be allocated to the properties' accounts.Not sure on the W-2 tax question though.I would confer with both the lawyer and CPA on this.

Allocate 3x what you'd expect to bonding primer >.

However, it also includes a schedule (a "Schedule K") that tells the IRS how the profit/loss of the partnership is being allocated to the partners.

A Limited Liability Company allows profit and loss percentages, as well as equity, allocated to each partner.

The math looks about right and or allocate 50% for expenses on average.

Comparing the plan to non-plan investments really does not make a whole lot of sense.Now, for an investor with enough capital and experience to look at overall portfolio allocation including both retirement funds and non-qualified funds, it starts to become a different story.  

In general, partnership elections are preferred for passive investments, and each investor is allocated a portion of the LLC's income/(loss) relative to their ownership %.S-Corp elections can be helpful when you have a lot of earned income, so you can pay out some of the profit as distributions, avoiding the ~15.3% self-employment tax that would be due if those amounts would be paid in salary.Lastly, C-Corp elections provide some incremental opportunities for business deductions, and are apparently the least-most audited structure.I have a series LLC w/ an S Corp for my rehab company, a C Corp for my marketing company, and I'll add a new series for each rental property I may acquire outside of my retirement accounts.

so if I don't allocate the expenses to one or more properties, I'm not sure where I'd put them.Also, should I be recording the expense as net, or gross (including sales tax)?

The IRS is going to allocate based on qualified use.