Passive Loss Carry Over Reduce IRA distributions

[Carl Graff]

OK just found out we (my wife and I) have about 65K in passive loss carry over going forward. So being retired with 2 rental incomes that break even or only generate a little income we will not be able to apply much if any of this for the foreseeable future. 

So one way to to benefit from the carry over is that we can apply 25K per year to ordinary income. Ironically I have visited web sites where licensed CPA's explicitly contradict each other over such a basic question as to weather you can use passive loss carry overs to reduce ordinary income. I believe, after several hours of research on the internet, the answer is yes you can use passive loss carryover to offset up to 25K of ordinary income *IF* you make less than 100K (which my wife and myself do as we only have a household income of about 40K per year - mostly from social security).

So assuming the above is true I think we can take withdrawals from our IRA's up to the amount where we have an excess of 25K extra ordinary income and than the carry over loss could then be used as a deduction against this income. 

Since I cannot find a clear answer to this - am I correct that IRA distributions count as ordinary (taxable) income and therefore we can use up to 25K per year of the passive carry over loss to reduce the tax liability incurred from the IRA distributions by that 25K amount?

I am really curious if the CPA's that reply (if any) to this are all in agreement. Because I will use a tax advisor - but due to the conflicting responses in blogs on this matter I just want to make sure that I choose one that agrees with the advice I get here.

Thanks,

  Carl