Last week, two Carolina Law alumni came back to Chapel Hill not as students but as U.S. Tax Court judges, visiting Professor Kathleen Thomas’s Federal Income Tax course to talk about how they got there and what the work actually looks like. 

Neither Emin Toro ’00 nor Cathy Fung ’08 set out to reach the Tax Court. Judge Toro arrived at UNC School of Law from Albania still learning how American legal careers worked, and only applied to clerk after a career services advisor suggested it. He went on to clerk at the D.C. Circuit and then for a Supreme Court justice before building what he expected to be a permanent career in private practice. Then came an unexpected call from out of nowhere. He confirmed the opportunity was real, ran the numbers to make sure his three kids could still go to college, and agreed to be considered. He has served on the court since 2020. 

Judge Fung’s path was longer. After earning her LL.M. at NYU she clerked at the Tax Court, spent three years at a law firm, then returned to government intending to stay for three years. She stayed for sixteen. Colleagues and contacts in the tax community eventually put her name forward, and she was confirmed in December 2024. What both judges had in common was that the opportunity came because people who knew their work believed in them enough to make a call. 

The Tax Court is a national Article I court with 19 presidentially appointed judges who travel to 74 cities so that taxpayers do not have to travel to Washington to be heard. At $60 to file a petition, it is accessible by design, which is why 78 percent of the people who appear before it represent themselves. The most common cases involve substantiation disputes, collection challenges, innocent spouse claims, and an increasing number of unreported income cases tied to third-party payment platforms. Judge Fung noted that PayPal, Venmo, Square, and similar platforms all report transactions to the IRS, and a missed 1099 does not disappear just because the taxpayer forgot it. 

Both judges addressed clerkships directly and practically. Judge Fung currently has two openings and is also hiring a paid summer extern, a position not listed on the court’s website but available to students willing to reach out. Judge Toro hires one clerk every other year. Applications can go directly to individual judges through the Tax Court’s website or through the court’s annual fall recruitment cycle. On what they look for: strong tax coursework, careful writing, and genuine curiosity. “I can’t teach a clerk who doesn’t care about being inquisitive,” Judge Toro said. 

The Q&A was the kind where students came prepared. Questions ranged from the mechanics of the Golsen rule to litigation strategy to what judges actually do when attorneys behave worse than the unrepresented taxpayers sitting across from them. Both judges answered directly and without much hedging. When asked what students should do right now, the advice was consistent: take the full tax curriculum including partnership and corporate, take classes outside your comfort zone, get involved in the ABA Tax Section. Judge Toro mentioned skipping Federal Jurisdiction as a student because he could not imagine needing it. He thinks about standing, ripeness, and mootness regularly now. It was, both judges suggested, the kind of thing you only understand looking back.