I have over 30 years of experience in payroll and payroll tax law and compliance.
If your employer provides you with non-cash compensation in the form of free rent, the use of a company car for personal use, i.e. non-business use, paying for the school tuition for your children, even gift cards as “bonuses” etc., like or not, this is taxable income to the employee and subject to payroll taxes to the employer.
Not withholding tax on it and not reporting it as income is tax evasion.
It used to be and still is that some employers would pay low wages but provide off the book’s compensation.
It used to be very prominent in apartment management where the husband did maintenance and the wife ran the rental office but only the husband was paid and not paid much but they got to live in an apartment rent free.
I know because my parents fell into this trap for several years with an unscrupulous apartment management company.
My mother worked in the rental office that was attached to our apartment 8 hours a day Monday to Saturday without receiving any pay and my dad was on call 24-7 for maintenance issues and was never paid any overtime as they deemed him to be “salaried”.
At first this seemed to my parents to be a good deal but it wasn’t. When they added up the value of the apartment and what they were being paid, including not being paid overtime, they were making well below minimum wage.