>>activities related to residential construction<<
What sort of activities? In my opinion one should distinguish between building houses and, for example, selling them. And in my observation a lot of activity is handled through an S-corp for the express purpose of excluding it from wages, which I feel would correspondingly limit the DPAD.
That's a start. And do they treat their profits as wages subject to payroll taxes?
In the special case of construction, the company does not have to hold title to the property. Otherwise the rules are the same. But don't accept or assume anything without studying it for yourself--at three pages, DPAD is one of the longest topics in Quickfinder.