I built RentReel because I kept filing this stuff myself.

Who I am

I run five short-term rentals. Not a portfolio I advise on — five properties I own, furnish, price, clean, get the 2am messages about, and file the taxes for. Two in Kentucky near Lake Cumberland, two in Ohio, and one on the Gulf in Panama City Beach.

RentReel came out of that. Every January I was rebuilding the same spreadsheet: reconciling channel payouts that never matched the bank, separating occupancy tax I'd collected from revenue I'd actually earned, and trying to reconstruct enough of an hours log to stand behind a §469 position. The generic landlord tools all stopped at a Schedule E built for a long-term rental. So I built the thing I needed.

What qualifies me to write about this

Operating experience, not credentials. Specifically:

• I file lodging tax in four jurisdictions every month — Florida DOR, the Bay County tourist development tax, Kentucky DOR, and Pulaski County — plus the returns each Ohio property sits under. Most of what I know about county lodging tax I learned by getting a registration wrong first.
• I run the §469 questions on my own returns. Average stay, material participation, what a defensible hours log actually looks like when you reconstruct it from calendars and bank data rather than keeping it contemporaneously — those are my problems before they're features.
• I read the primary sources. Every tax claim on this site is cited to the IRC, the Treasury regulations, or an IRS document, and the CPA Review Guide lists every rule RentReel implements with its citation and confidence level so an accountant can check our work.

What I'm not

I am not a CPA, an enrolled agent, or a tax preparer, and nothing I write is tax advice. RentReel is bookkeeping software. It keeps tax-ready books and produces a per-property Schedule E; a licensed professional files it. When I'm unsure about something, the honest answer on this site is "confirm this with your CPA" rather than a confident guess — and when a rate or a rule can't be verified against a primary source, we say so instead of papering over it.

The properties

These are real, they're mine, and they're bookable — which is the only proof of an operator that's worth anything:

• Joy On The Lake — Somerset, Kentucky. Lake-view, five minutes from Lee's Ford Marina.
• Lakeview Lodge — Bronston, Kentucky. Lake-view, on Lake Cumberland.
• Fred & Sissy's Cottage — Uhrichsville, Ohio. Near Amish Country, and close to the Polar Express at Dennison.
• The Truro House — Reynoldsburg, Ohio, just east of Columbus.
• Changes in Attitude — Panama City Beach, Florida. Gulf-front.

The company

RentReel LLC is a Wyoming company and a subsidiary of Joy Family Holdings LLC. It's bootstrapped — no outside investors — which is why you'll see me answer support email myself. If you write to [email protected], it reaches me.

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