Does blender support what I could best describe as "Occlusion Planes"? Is there a way that i can have a plane set to not render anything beyond it?

What i am trying to do is create custom UI graphics for a java application. I find that blender produces some VERY nice looking UIs with very little effort (relatively speaking). I am getting stuck on making a switch though. My problem is that i need to make the switch disappear as it turns... for clarity here is a basic mesh of the type of switch i am going to use:


When the button gets switched from on to off it will need to rotate. when the edge lowers i need it to stop anything below the shadow plane from being rendered. perhaps even have it cut off the actual mesh. Im hoping one of you could tell me if/how this can be done...

QUESTION
Can a plane be made to exclude portions objects that it intersects with from rendering?
can a plane be made to bisect any mesh that passes through it?
For this I would use a render layer with a mask layer set up.

In the scene I have a plane that will act as a mask on layer 2 and the switch object to be masked on layer 1. When both layers are enabled it looks like this:

Solid View:



Wire view, shows some of the switch object is below the mask object:



In the 'Render Layers' tab of the 'Properties' area I have chosen the first layer to be the layer to render and the second layer to be the mask layer:



Which results in:



This works fine for the internal renderer but for Cycles one additional option is necessary in the 'Render' tab in the 'Properties' area: