You did not make a mistake when you bought that equipment through your S corp.
You made a decision based on the only structure you had. The problem is that most business owners keep making the same decision for ten years and call it strategy.
There is a specific pattern I see constantly. Business owner is making real money. They have real equipment needs. They buy the equipment, they write it off, and they feel like they played the game correctly. They got a deduction. Their CPA was happy. End of story.
What they never ask is whether the entity that bought the equipment was the right entity to buy it. That question does not come up because it requires thinking about structure, and most people stopped thinking about structure when they converted their LLC to an S corp and figured that was the end of it.
Here is the uncomfortable part. The way you bought that equipment, it cannot protect you. If someone gets hurt involving that equipment, that liability is sitting right next to your revenue. The same company that processes your income is the same company holding your risk. That is not a structure. That is everything in one room with no walls.
And you probably already knew something felt off. You have been writing off equipment for years and your net worth does not reflect it. The deductions happened. The wealth did not show up. That is usually the sign that the structure is not separating what it should be separating.
The leasing company concept forces you to think about your business in a way that most entrepreneurs genuinely resist, which is that where you hold something matters as much as whether you hold it. Owning equipment is not the same thing as owning equipment in the right place. Buying something is not the same thing as building a structure around that purchase.
The honest question is not whether you knew this. Most people did not. The honest question is whether, now that you understand it, you are willing to back up and build the thing correctly, or whether you are going to keep justifying the way it is set up because changing it feels like more work than staying put.
Because that is the real trap. Not the tax bill. The comfort of the familiar.