“The IRS has to audit the president, and that puts them in an almost automatic conflict of interest when you have to audit your boss,” said George Yin, a UVA law professor and former staffer on the Joint Committee on Taxation who wrote a widely circulated paper on the statute that empowers Neal to issue the request. “But I think that from the standpoint of the committee, that seems like a very clear and legitimate reason to make this type of request.”