Sick leave/family leave credit for self employed individual in two areas

[swilliams0330]

My situation is a bit unique so please bear with me:

1) In November  2020, I released some music.  I generated slight revenue by year's end and have been paid royalties from it in 2021 so as I understand it now qualifies as business income.

2) In November 2021, I also started working for 3 different food/household goods delivery companies.

3) My spouse and I file jointly. She was self employed from 2018 - 2020 but her ability to work was affected due to COVID lockdowns as well as our daughter's school being closed so we claimed both credits for her. I was unsure if I could claim for myself as it asked which Schedule SE I used in 2019 which I didn't have due to no income.

With the facts stated above, would I be able to use my spouse's net income for 2020 to qualify for the credits this year (numerous COVID related situations occurred) or is it on an individual basis considering I started my business in 2020? It is a somewhat confusing topic  and I'm going off what I read in this article - https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/credits-sick-family-leave-self-employed-who-qualifi...

[ThomasM125]

Each of you must separately determine your eligibility for the sick and family leave credit. For you to be eligible for the credits, you would have to regularly carry on a business. Since you started the business in late 2020 and earned limited money from it that year, you would probably would not qualify in so far as regularly carrying on a business for that year is concerned.

If you just collected royalties in 2021, you would also not qualify that year, as the purpose of the credit is to pay you for time spent away from your job because of Covid. 

Your spouse's income would not affect your ability to claim a credit since the credits are determined on an individual basis. I believe you said that she already received credits based on her work.

[swilliams0330]

@ThomasM125 Thank you for your response. To elaborate, in the program once you go through the process of trying to qualify, you answer all the questions necessary, it asks about using the net income from the prior year found on Schedule SE.  Let's say the amount from her was $11K, that is entered and she qualifies. I'm asking since we're filing joint, would I be able to use that same figure or do I need to have my own

And as I stated, it was a complicated year. For the family leave section, we both got vaccinated  and took time off our individual work to handle that in addition to me primarily handling my daughter on an ongoing during and after her school closures and having to isolate and test due to family members having covid etc.