I'm glad to see I am not alone. Like Mark I had the same experience and similar concerns. After 4 years of using the Premier edition, it was not available at the store I usually buy TurboTax so I used the Home and Business edition this year. It took my tax information in a different order, but aside from that, the questions seemed to be identical to Premier. Like Mark, my tax situation doesn't change much from year to year, however instead of the risk meter being near an expected 0-risk , the meter needle was way into the red at what I would call about 90% risk.
In using a tax program to file taxes, we are basically relying on one "Black Box" the tax program to interface our personal circumstance with another "Black Box" the tax code. I find the risk meter to provide a warm fuzzy feeling, or apparently a lack thereof, with respect to achieving some confidence in the effort that just put-in to avoid using a professional tax preparer! Naturally I took the risk meter's assessment to heart and went over the input fields with a fine tooth comb. Found a couple of errors that marginally changed my tax result, but the corrected entries did not budge the meter. I noticed the program did not allocate my deductions properly between personal and business use for my residence. I opted to enter the allocated deduction amounts manually. This changed my taxes dramatically, but the risk meter still didn't budge!
I would say the algorithm has been changed. If it can be changed to reflect year-to-year changes in the tax code or IRS activities, it can certainly be changed to reflect Marketing's whim to sell more of the audit defense product. I now that I will be buying it this year and the services of a professional tax preparer next year!
