First let me point out that the Refund-O-Meter is only correct once all your income and expenses have been entered and the program is fully operational. With each entry of income or expenses the meter will continue to vary as the program recalculates the return with each step you take. If this annoys you then turn off the meter until the end.
Next ... the program interview flow is poorly designed and it will give you a false refund total early in the interview. The program gives you 100% of the CTC and the third stimulus credit once you have completed the MY INFO tab early in the interview and then much later in the deductions & Credits tab you are asked how much of these credits you got in advance and then the credits are adjusted for the advance payments which will show as a reduced refund amount or an increase in the balance due.
Same thing for the EIC … the program gives you the credit in the refund posted BEFORE you get to the EIC portion of the interview. At that point it asks you a couple of questions that could possibly REMOVE the credit already reflected in the refund posted which is also a point of confusion for many.
One day the programmers may get this changed to more timely reflect the section you are working on as you work on it and not way in advance. Users are not happy when they see the refund being reduced without a good explanation especially when the program says you can get $X as a credit and they see the refund either being reduced or not increased.
