When is a loan not quite a loan?

So you took a loan from your 401K, because after all, if you were going to pay interest, you wanted to pay it to yourself, and there is some validity in that.  However, you hadn't bargained on losing your job before you repaid the loan.   You borrowed $20,000, repaid $5,000 and had an outstanding loan of $15,000.   If you get terminated with a 401K loan outstanding, you are required to pay the entire remainder in a very short time period, back to your company.  If  you are unable to do so,  then the loan morphs into a taxable distribution.  Now that $15,000 is added to your income and you will