A new one to me.

I'm trying to figure out the value of what might be learnt from the question, though. Let's guess for a moment that the goal is to identify fronting companies....

Actually, in a few cases I know of, that question would reveal it (if it was ever given an honest answer). They generally have absolutely no costs because it's set up as a shell that conduits the work to the "real" providor.

But all you need is to have the fronting company skim 2.1% towards profit, or pad some wage/salary costs into the shell company.

Depending on how they are structured, JV's might also get flagged by this question.