Sole proprietor wants to put more in IRAs

[Jim West]

Hi all,

Just found this site and am very anxious to explore all it has to offer. I have a quick tax/IRA question. My wife and I own a 4 unit building that we reside in. We are both also self-employed in separate businesses. Neither of our businesses produces much income after deduction of expenses. This is fine with us since we don't need a lot of income from them anyway. The problem is that because we don't show much profit it limits how much we can put into our traditional IRA accounts. Our building is not held in any corporate or LLC structure, so we just file a schedule E with our return.

I was wondering if there was a way to take some of the income from the building and pay ourselves a nominal amount that we could report on our schedule C's using a 1099-misc? We do all the work around the building, painting, cleaning the Airbnb unit, snow removal, yard work, general maintenance, etc.. This would raise our individual incomes in our respective businesses and allow us to put more away for retirement. I know we would end up paying self-employment tax on those amounts, but I don't have a problem with that.

Is this legal?  And if so, is it a smart thing to do? I welcome any advice that the group has to offer.

Thanks so much in advance for any responses I may get.