Hourly per diem for a job in Santa Clara (Sacramento: rent, employment)

[HaDs]

Hi,

This questions is related to employment in Santa Clara.
My wife is in the process of being hired for a company in Santa Clara (I will call them "company A" from now on). She will be employed on contract for the first 12 month, after that she may become a full-time employee based on performance. The employment agency (I will call them "the recruiters" from now on) which the company is using has been working very hard to get my wife to accept a low ball offer for the job so that they can make a huge profit. During the interview it seemed that company A was interested in knowing what kind of offers the recruiters are making but they are not legally allowed to say what the hourly rate they are giving the recruiters is. The used another position as an example saying they would pay $65/hr and the employee would receive $45-50/hrs from the recruiters. In my wife's case, the recruiters started by offering a $25/hr rate and later on settled at $36/hr. Later we learned that this would be a 2nd shift job and she would have to work until about midnight. We believed the rate was too low for this and the recruiters said that $27 out of the $36 would be given as per diem and thus not taxable ($9 W2 and $27 per diem). They said this would be possible since we currently live near Sacramento and I would remain in the Sacramento area for the entire 12-month period.

We are a bit suspicious of this. She will probably not end up using more than $12-15/hr on living expenses. I get the feeling that we would end up having to pay tax on the remaining $21-24/hr. Or that we would get in some trouble with the IRS. We are not really familiar with tax laws. I even suspect that the recruiter would be able to claim that the per diem portion was only paid for living expenses and that we should pay the remaining portion back. I don't even know what would qualify as a living expense, i.e. would we be able to claim rent as living expenses?

Sorry for the long post. I just get the feeling that the recruiters are tricking us into something with the per diem offer...

Thanks!