Advice needed for hiring an employee for the first time

[FurniturePlanet]

Hi,
Mine is a furniture retail business and a new one at that. It's an online business at present, but I intend to open an actual brick and mortar shop soon.
To start off, I'll be selling at the shop myself as I have ample experience in this, but as I won't be able to handle both sales and admin as the business progresses, I would soon require a proper salesperson for that shop.
The items to be sold in that shop will be mostly high ticket ones as it is a rather niche market there.
What I would like to know is the sort of pay, bonus (i.e.commissions) and benefits I am required by law or by general market principles to offer to a furniture salesperson.
There also seems to be an ethical issue regarding spiffs.
Also, I have been asked to see if a self employed salesperson (i.e., freelancer) who works only on commission basis might suit me.
I have rather limited funds at the moment due to the credit crunch.
Could someone please advice me as to how I should go about this?
Thanks.
Kind regards,
- Abrar F.
Furniture Planet

[Indizine]

You have to pay the National Minimum Wage that applies to that age group (its lower for young people).

If the person will be working in your shop as if an employee - you tell them what to do, how to do it, where to do it, tell them when they can take their holidays, what time to start and leave, and tell them basically what they can and cant do - then they are not self employed and you would be up against IR35. Also, if they only worked for you and could not work for anyone else of their choosing, this is also deemed employment not s/e, so basically the commission-only on a self employed basis is out.

Just employ a regular person, on a decent wage equal to the going rate if you want good performance. Pay peanuts and you get monkeys so to speak.