I use Illustrator almost exclusively to prep my files, and that is 72DPI. Some apps like lightburn and fusion 360 default to 96DPI. So see if the app you’re using to export your PNG’S can do that, or just scale your images appropriately.
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I’ve tried designing at 72 dpi and 96 dpi, and both scale differently so I’m clearly doing something else wrong too. :-/
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Not necessarily. That software seems to exist just to annoy me.
What software are you designing in? If nothing else you can design full scale then save a version at 75% scale and import the smaller file. It should come in full scale then. Is that a pain? Yup. Is it a pain coming in too big? Also yup.
In your example above create a .75x.75 inch square and import that. It should come in at 1 inch.
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Yeah, the software is OK at best, that’s for sure. I just did a lovely raised texture on a detailed map of the watershed of the US, and the preview looked great, but half of the texture just printed flat for some reason. 
I’m using Corel draw, and the designing at 75% makes more sense now so might give it a try. And it’s not like I can’t just manually adjust the size in the software, but like you said, the extra steps are just frustrating.
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The easiest ways to handle scaling issues are to save in PDF (as it uses real world measurements, unlike the pixel measurements used in SVG) or make your SVG file exactly 20 inches wide by 12 inches high. (When the GF software sees an SVG file with that ratio it ignores its normal DPI assumptions and imports it as 20"x12")
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