Commission Only / Self-Employed jobs

[GoneAnon]

I noticed that many/most of the vacancies at the local job centre are for these kinds of positions and two questions arise:

Why are Commission-Only jobs legal in these days of minimum wage? They all say the employer has given an undertaking that applicants can earn at least the minimum wage so is that really all it takes to get around the law?

The taxman only regards me as self-employed if I direct my own activities, yet these jobs are listed as something like a "Regional Manager", and reporting to a "Regional Director" or similar. Why don't the two Government departments agree a standard definition of self-employed? I'm guessing this is just another way for employers to avoid paying tax, NI or salaries...

[Eric Mc]

People paid on commission are still employees - unless they are given total freedom to find their own customers and conduct their activities in their own way without direction and restriction.

And use someone else or hire others to do their work for them.

[GoneAnon]

That's exactly my point - these non-jobs aren't really self-employed because the successful applicants can't "subcontract" the work, and they don't pay minimum wage which is supposed to be the lowest rate payable to an employee, so how do they get away with it?

And are the job centre colluding so they can say they have x thousand vacancies on their books? (If you check the website, they seem to list the same position covering the same area several, or even dozens, of times - does that mean there is one vacancy or lots included in the statistics?)

[Deva Link]

IF done properly then the employer would take tax and NI in the normal way based on how much commission the person earned, with the minimum paid being the minimum wage.

I suspect the reality in a lot of cases with these kind of jobs is a lot less cut and dried.