January 12, 2026

Happy Monday, everyone ☀️
Good morning — here’s to a fresh start, a clear mind, and a strong cup of coffee to kick things off.

Let me ask you something to ease into the week: have you ever been paid back… but it didn’t quite feel like a win?
Reimbursements are supposed to be simple — yet for a lot of business owners, they quietly turn into something else entirely.

Today’s post breaks down how reimbursements can accidentally become taxable income — and how a few small adjustments can keep your money labeled correctly and working the way it’s supposed to.

Because starting the week off right sometimes means fixing the little things that slip by unnoticed.

— Ryan Rincon, Founder at The Wealth Wagon Inc.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

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This is not about fraud.
This is not about aggressive tax planning.
This is not about write-offs.

This is about how expenses move from your pocket back to your business — and how the method matters far more than the amount.

Most owners assume:

“If the business pays me back, it’s fine.”

That assumption is costly.

There are only two ways money can move from a business to an owner:

If reimbursement is not structured correctly, the IRS defaults it to income.

And income gets taxed.

The mistake isn’t spending money.

The mistake is how the business acknowledges the spend.

Common examples:

Owners swipe a personal card and think:

“I’ll just reimburse myself later.”

But how that reimbursement happens is everything.

Without a formal accountable plan:

This happens silently.

Nothing “breaks.”

You just pay more tax forever.

Many owners:

To the IRS, that’s not reimbursement.

That’s income.

And once income is reported, you can’t undo it.

This mistake doesn’t hurt once.

It hurts every year.

Because:

All from expenses you already paid.

Because it’s not visible in isolation.

CPAs see:

They don’t see:

By the time returns are prepared, the classification is locked.

This does not require complexity.

It requires structure.

An accountable plan does three things:

When done correctly:

This is not a loophole.

It’s basic compliance most owners never implement.

This mistake hits hardest for:

Ironically, the cleaner your books look, the easier this is to miss.