People where I work only really need to use 4 or 5 tags...
Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3, and possibly occasionally Table Body and Table Header.
The templates that we developed have all of the formatting, and more importantly, all of the directions, that anyone needs.
And they still screw it up.
As for fonts, .gov standards seem to be either Arial or Times New Roman, depending on the group that put together the template. My contract's templates are all TNR, but I have to use Arial a lot.
My favorite font is Palatino. It's what American Rifleman used to be printed in (may still be). It's got a very elegant look to it.