Before I meet with a CPA, rental properties?

So you want to set up an LLC, and treat the money you personally invested in the properties as a loan to the LLC?

And then charge your LLCs interest?

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I depreciate the cost of the mortgage at 27.5 years

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Do you mean this is the payoff period for the mortgage? Or are you talking about the depreciation of the properties?

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interest that can maybe be expensed

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You would then have to report it as income.

So you want to treat the initial down payment, essentially, as a loan to the company, and amortize it with an interest expense.

You could do that, but you would be required to also pick up interest income personally, so it would be a wash. You would get no benefit.

Also, I assume you are the sole owner of the properties and would be the sole owner of the LLC, so by putting it initially into the LLC, the only thing you are doing (assuming it's treated as a single member LLC with income being reported on your personal tax return, Schedule E) is asset protection, which don't get me wrong, is a good thing to do.

But for tax purposes, it's as if the LLC doesn't exist.

Now if you were to put the props into an LLC and then bring in additional investors into the LLC, then the LLC would become a seperate entity for tax. It still would not change the interest idea, though.

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So you want to treat the initial down payment, essentially, as a loan to the company, and amortize it with an interest expense. You could do that, but you would be required to also pick up interest income personally, so it would be a wash. You would get no benefit.

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Taxpayers constantly devise form over substance schemes to try and recharacterize income and losses. A typical purpose is to try and create passive income, that can be offset with passive losses from unrelated activities that would otherwise be disallowed, and investment interest expense that would be deductible separately.

The OP is proposing to do it backwards. But he doesn't mention any other passive activities, so he wouldn't likely consider the need for passive income.