Pension PlayPen has decided that its meeting at 10.3o am on Tuesday morning will be our chance to establish what we as a community find acceptable and what unacceptable of the various proposals so far put forward. It was around now that the Chancellor in 2014 decided that Pension Freedom might be a good idea and by the Wednesday in 2014 the die was cast. The same may happen this week, there may be a radical new idea that arrives at the budget that impacts pension saving and pensions in payment, but we cannot guess the minds of ministers and their civil servants.

And what we publish will be our video and a blog of Wednesday morning in time for the budget but not to change anything. It will simply our statement of intent for what we want to hear.

The FT runs its headline on pensions this morning and Mary and the pension team tell us

A Budget tax raid on salary sacrifice schemes is set to raise £3bn-£4bn, hitting businesses and encouraging employers to cut pension payments to staff.

Either the Chancellor got the wrong data or she and Torsten Bell have a new way to take a way the chance to swap personal for corporate pension contributions.

…people briefed on the plans  are now forecasting it will raise more than the £2bn previously floated.

For those who don’t follow this stuff (don’t manage payroll or sign off pay bills) National Insurance is charged at 15 per cent for employers and 8 per cent on earnings less than £50,270 and 2 per cent on income above that.

It is hard to see beyond this measure . Around 5mn basic-rate taxpayers currently benefit from salary sacrifice schemes for their pension contributions and a cap could bring many of them into the potential Budget change, especially if it was set low.

They do not include the low paid many of whom are still awaiting the return of the incentive to save they never got if they were in net pay schemes.  These were mainly public sector workers  and those in net pay private workplace pensions since around 2014. They should be getting payments from the HMRC right now but due to incompetence , HMRC are putting back repayment of the incentives the net paid never got till next year.

So taking away National Insurance incentives for the better off could be considered equalisation of pain with those who have suffered from net-pay deprivation.

It is hard to see it any other way than Steve Webb sees it

“It is hard to see how such a policy would be consistent with a government objective to protect ‘ordinary working people”

It is bound to have an impact on those using salary sacrifice and it is bound to impact the generosity of employers who are paying above the minimum auto enrolment payments. The FT quote the

A survey of more than 300 human resources directors this week by the Reward and Employee Benefits Association found that almost a third of UK businesses said they would cut staff pension payments if the cap for salary sacrifice tax relief was set at £2,000 a year.

A further 45 per cent said they would slash other employee benefits or services if Reeves implemented the policy at the Budget next week.

This is a highly contentious subject and there will be some who will see this as an acceptable way of balancing the many benefits given to pensions and those who manage them – against the problems that the nation as a whole faces – all £30bn of them.

What do you think? Join us on Tuesday at 10.30 am to make your feelings felt and be part of a statement made prior not after the budget.

Click here to join direct from this blog at 10.30 Tuesday