The add-back that surprised me most isn't one that gets pushed back on. It's the one nobody adds, which is the cost of replacing the owner. Most CIMs add back the owner's salary and perks in full. If you're going to run the business, fine. If you're hiring a GM, the lender will put a market-rate salary back into the cash flow, and your adjusted earnings drop by that amount before anyone has argued about a single repair or family member. Two other things I'd check, from the lender side: 1. The tax return is the anchor. A lender starts from the returns and works forward, so an add-back that doesn't tie to a line on the return, or to a document you can hand over, is earnings you'll be paying for that the lender may not count. On a $100k add-back at a 4x multiple, that's $400k of price the debt won't support, and the gap lands on your equity or on a renegotiation. 2. Recurring "one-time" items are a cost. If the same repair, legal fee or write-off shows up in two or three years of returns, it's a run-rate expense. Pull each year side by side. Anything that repeats gets treated as operating cost, not an add-back. For family on payroll, the question is whether they do real work. If yes, you're replacing them at market cost, so it isn't an add-back. If no, it's a legitimate add-back, and it needs to be documented as such. The cleanest way to run it is three columns per add-back: what the CIM claims, what the return and the paperwork support, and what you'd actually pay someone to replace. The middle column is the one a lender underwrites.