Placing rental income into a retirement account?

[Jeff S.]

Is there a way to defer some rental income into some kind of retirement account when retired?

Lets say someone was able to live entirely off savings for a year, could they somehow put their rental income into a deferred (not annuity) retirement account and pay no taxes?

[Jon Holdman]

The simplest thing is just to use the income from your rentals to fund your contribution to your IRA. Unfortunately, that's only a few grand per year and is subject to income limitations.

You might look into a Solo 401K and see if you could set up a company that owns rentals and using the income to fund the 401K. The contribution limits are much higher. You do need to watch out for the self-dealing rules. Those probably mean you can't put current rentals into this deal. You already own those, so selling them to a qualified plan of any sort isn't allowed. Solo 401k's don't work for me because I have a regular job, so I've not looked at them in detail.