Invest in a pension, take advantage of the tax breaks and get free money from your employer in the form of their contributions. This has been the unquestioned wisdom for decades. Over the past 25 years though, successive governments have chosen to abuse that orthodoxy, slowly chipping away at the tax breaks available to pension savers.

Persuading people to defer consumption and put money aside for decades into the future is not an easy sell. The incentive has to be substantial and obvious.

It is notable that among the self-employed, pension saving has already collapsed. Figures vary but the consensus is that fewer than one in five of those who work for themselves are now regularly saving in a pension. The message is clear: without the additional convenience and incentive of an employer-sponsored scheme, pension saving is no longer attractive — the tax breaks alone aren’t enough.

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It isn’t hard to see why. Starting with Gordon Brown’s infamous tax raid on pension dividend income in 1997, governments have been persistently salami-slicing away at the system. In 2010, the coalition government picked up where he had left off, cutting back on the (admittedly very generous) pension lifetime and annual allowances. We’ve had unwelcome new complexities imposed on us, in the form of the tapered annual allowance and the money purchase annual allowance.

The Treasury seems to want to prevent retirement saving rather than to encourage it.

The tax-free pension lump sum has been frozen, probably never again to be increased. This too undermines the incentive to save for anyone whose pension pot surpasses the old lifetime allowance of just over £1 million. Before anyone reaches for their tiny violin, I’d also point out that £1 million ain’t what it used to be when it comes to living off your savings for the rest of your life, especially when comparedwith the final salary pension of a middle manager in the public sector.

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From 2027, pension funds will be subject to inheritance tax. This is a very significant retrospective change to the rules, punishing those who had the foresight and discipline to build up a decent private pension.

And now the option to use salary sacrifice has been capped, a measure which has not only restricted a popular and valuable tax break but also introduced further unnecessary and unwelcome complexity into the system.

On top of all this, we’re also having to deal with the reality of frozen income tax thresholds. It always used to be the case that most people paying higher rate tax in their working lives would be basic rate taxpayers in retirement. At this rate, even pensioners on average incomes are going to find themselves drawn into paying 40 per cent tax in retirement. Meanwhile, those on the basic rate are finding an increasing proportion of their retirement income is subject to income tax at 20 per cent, thanks to the frozen personal allowance. Everyone is losing out.

None of this is being executed according to any kind of coherent plan. The taxation of pensions has less and less to do with helping the workers of today save for tomorrow, and more and more to do with plugging holes in the government’s spending plans today.

The government has asked a pensions commission to look at the adequacy of our retirement savings system. They should also be taking an objective look at the taxation of pensions and whether the incentives to save still work for people. This is a lot less certain than it used to be.

Tom McPhail is a pensions commentator with 20 years’ experience across the industry