Throughout the literature on the charged Riemannian Penrose inequality, it is generally assumed that there is no charged matter present; that is, the electric field is divergence-free. The aim of this article is to clarify when the charged Riemannian Penrose inequality holds in the presence of charged matter, and when it does not.

First we revisit Jang's proof of the charged Riemannian Penrose inequality to show that under suitable conditions on the charged matter, this argument still carries though. In particular, a charged Riemannian Penrose inequality is obtained from this argument when charged matter is present provided that the charge density does not change sign. Moreover, we show that such hypotheses on the sign of the charge are in fact required by constructing counterexamples to the charged Riemannian Penrose inequality when these conditions are violated. We conclude by noting that one of these counterexamples contradicts a version of the charged Penrose inequality existing in the literature, and explain how this existing result can be repaired.