A friend and I want to form an entitity to pool investment money with
the express intent to fund our annual reunions in Vegas.  Profits will
be either compounded or skimmed to give us ample gambling funds.  Here
are my specific questions:

1) what is the best legal structure: partnership, LLC, S-corp (what do
investment clubs use?) - do we have to pay self-employment tax on
earnings (this kind of hurts when compared with individual investments
taxed as capital gains)?

2) can we declare the Vegas trip our annual shareholder's meeting and
therefore deduct our travel/meals/entertainment as business expenses?

I like the idea of having a seperate entitity for us to pool money
(otherwise it could get messy if we use our individual brokerage
accounts to track joint investments).  I also really like the idea of
writing off our trip expenses (maybe this is a pipe dream).  However the
cost of setting up an LLC, plus paying the self-employment taxes,
might kill the benefits.  Is it worth it?

Thanks!

Won't work.  A business entity has to be formed to make a profit, not
to finance trips to Vegas.

It is being formed to make a profit, we simply want to use the profit
to gamble in Vegas.  No?