I am a little confused by your post.
Who is getting shut down by the IRS, the blackhatters?
I would think that most honest companies who top google also pay their taxes perfectly and treat their customers well.
The problem with hiring SEO people is that not all are even honest and some will use techniques that can hurt you in the long run, such as using cloaked pages to drive traffic to your site etc.
Google policies are very simple common sense and are basically just dictated by visitor experience.
1. make sure your page loads fast
2. make sure each page has one consistent topic
3. make sure your internal navigation is complete and easy to follow
4. make sure your page grows “naturally”
If you build your site according to these very basic principles, and keep making it a better experience for visitors, google will move you up the ranks slowly but surely and when you arrive on top, you will be good and stable.
Any short cuts result in instablity of your positions.
You can of course adjust to this by having many sites etc. There is room for a variety of business models. That is all black hat is, another business model.
Personally, I like stablity. I don’t care to spend my time messing with google SERPS. I prefer generating content and creating something I am proud of.