Went to a well-known tax chain here in Virginia, VA USA.

I have three properties in two states. My rent just barely covers the HOA fees, mortgage and taxes. Random repair costs eat away any profit and I have a loss each year.

This year, we filed with the state as an LLC with intent to roll up all the properties under one entity for tax purposes.

Between my wife and myself, our fulltime jobs are over $150K

This year, I seem to suddenly get hit with $8,000.00 more in taxes. (total Fed tax is $12,700) The preparer (a new guy) says that
- this is from my income on three rental properties
- We can only deduct expenses on one property.
- We need to put in 900 hours of work to get more deductions as a real estate professional.

For three properties combined
Combined rent collected Annually is $60,000
Mortgage and Taxes is $38,400.00
HOA Fees annually is $18,300
Repairs and maintenance $3,000.00
$700 annual for property insurance
I travel 2200 miles annually to manage the properties and make repairs. $1210 mileage reimbursement
$1800 spent on hotels and meals travelling to property 220 miles away.
LLC filing fee is $175

Does this sound right? $8000 more in tax due to "rental income" sounds steep.
I suspect he missed something. It appears he is only filling all this under my personal income tax. I thought he would be filing this as an S-Corp or something? He says the LLC only protects me from lawsuit and there is no tax benefit for filing.

I have a fulltime job, but I spend a lot of time responding to tenant requests, managing HOA demands, collecting rent, researching How-To and performing repairs myself,

Does anyone have any thoughts or tips?

We have not yet finalized because we received $300 dividend income from a stock and he says we need the company's EIN number and won't continue until we get him that information. We think this is wrong as we never needed an Employer ID number for a stock!

When we see him again, we're going to ask the office manager to check the numbers on his work.