Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 17, 1992 TAG: 9202150035
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHARLYNE H. McWILLIAMS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
FORMER IRS AGENTS SWITCH SIDES
Used to be that when Don J. Morris and William E. Williams walked into a room, people would shudder or mutter curses under their breath.They were from the IRS.
For about five years Morris was an Internal Revenue Service agent, helping to send tax evaders to jail, including former West Virginia Gov. William W. Barron. He also helped teach the next generations of agents at the IRS National Training Center in Arlington.
Williams spent nine years as an agent working on civil and criminal fraud cases and 23 years in IRS management positions, including deputy commissioner and acting commissioner.
Now, they're both trying to keep taxpayers out of trouble. Morris and his son, Michael D. Morris, run Don J. Morris & Co. Inc., a financial consulting and tax prepartation firm in Roanoke.
And Williams is assistant to the president of H&R Block Inc., a Kansas City, Mo.-based chain of tax preparation stores. Williams travels the country six months a year telling taxpayers the latest on tax issues, and last week visited Roanoke.
Morris said he changed careers because his work with the IRS had become routine and he wanted the challenge of working on his own.
"For 12 1/2 years I was flying with the dragon," he said. "It was time to pull out a sword."
Williams said the long hours finally got to him. But because he'd been involved with taxes most of his life, the switch to Block seemed natural.
In fact, Block and the IRS work to do the same thing: make sure people pay a fair amount of tax, he said. He added that the majority of people are honest and willing to pay tax, unlike when he began in the 1940s and 1950s as an agent. Then, there was a tax protest, and a few people refused to pay taxes. Since then, people have become educated about the tax system.
Things have also changed in the tax preparation business since Morris opened his doors in 1969.
"Back then, all you needed was a pencil, a government form and an adding machine," he said.
His Brambleton Avenue office now is loaded with computers, laser printers and tax preparation software, all signs of the change in preparing taxes. The latest innovation is a compact disk that holds the equivalent of 300,000 pages of information, or the contents of 18,000 floppy disks.
When Morris started, he had 52 clients. Now he and his son, a certified public accountant, handle year-round business for 900 clients across the country.,
Having worked for the tax agency, Morris said he can pass along knowledge about how the system is supposed to work and what government auditors are allowed to do. Morris said returns noting unusually high expenses and deductions are footnoted and documents sought as proof.
Both men agreed that while IRS agents aren't going to win popularity contests, they've become more public-relations conscious, more courteous and more cooperative.