That's a brilliant idea. But...there's a setback. Discussing it with my client, I realized that I had misunderstood him.
He was not interested in paying social security -- instead, he simply wanted to get the deduction for self-employed health insurance only. I had previously advised he couldn't get it. But, his friendly neighborhood insurance agent (substituting for the infamous "barber") told him he could get it because he routinely sold policies to many other landlords who (unlike him) had no connection to their operations other that collecting the rent, yet they were all happily deducting it with no complaints at all from IRS. I believe that because probably nobody's minding the store at IRS and although I can argue the agent's got a policy sale axe to grind, I can't argue that the other landlords who say yea are lying because they're probably not.
What a dilemma! The dopey insurance agent probably thinks he's right, the other landlords are clueless, my client's gullible, and I'm barring the door with ethics (likely known as "that tax guy who doesn't know what you can write off").