Elaine Sommerville

Elaine Sommerville is licensed as a Certified Public Accountant by the State of Texas. She has worked in public accounting since 1985. Twenty-five of these years have been spent focusing on churches and other non-profit organizations. Her practice has been and continues to be centered primarily on the tax compliance aspects of these organizations. She has assisted in the representation of several large-case IRS exams as well as other IRS examinations of smaller organizations.  

Elaine currently devotes her time to handling various IRS issues for individuals and for exempt organizations of various types. She actively consults on a variety of IRS compliance issues for churches and other non-profit organizations and prepares information returns of all types for tax-exempt organizations. She holds a Bachelor of Business Administration in Accountancy and Information Systems from the University of Texas of the Permian Basin.  

Elaine is currently the sole shareholder of the CPA firm of Sommerville & Associates, P.C. located in Arlington, Texas. The firm employs ten staff members, providing tax and consulting services to over 300 churches and non-profit organizations. Not only is her CPA practice centered on non-profit organizations in areas of tax compliance, but she also has a passion for training those who work for and with churches and non-profit organizations. To this end, she is a regular speaker for the Texas Society of CPAs, the National Association of Church Business Administration, the Houston Church CO+OP and the CO+OP Ministry Conference, and Shelby Systems, and is an instructor for the American Institute for Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). As an instructor for the AICPA, she teaches eight-hour classes to other CPAs in areas of tax planning for non-profit organizations and in the preparation of the IRS Form 990. She has taught extensively on preparation of the Form 990 since its redesign by the IRS for the 2008 tax year, including conducting both eight-hour and four-hour courses for the AICPA and various chapters of the Texas Society of CPAs.

Elaine is a contributing author to various publications produced by Christianity Today and by Thomson Reuters/PPC, including their Nonprofit Tax and Governance Guide. She is a member of the AICPA, the Texas Society of CPAs, and the National Association of Church Business Administration; serves on the board of DFW Hope Springs, a ministry dedicated to rescuing young women out of the bondage of human trafficking; and serves as the chair for the TSCPA Nonprofit Conference Committee. Due to her significant contributions to the church administration profession, she was inducted into the National Association for Church Business Administration Hall of Fame in 2011.