Higher-rate tax relief on pensions

The purpose of a pension is to defer pay until retirement. If you are deferring pay, why should you be taxed on it - at any rate before you receive it? Employer contributions to an employees pension fund get full business tax relief so must employee contributions or the system will remain forever flawed, with the employed having access to a gaping loophole (salary sacrifice to pension) that the self employed can never benefit from. Every £1000 profit an employer earns can be paid in full into a pension fund - there is no tax consequence. An employee paying higher rate tax gets £983 invested into his pension for every £1000 of earnings paid into a pension. For the basic rate taxpayer this falls to £862. The culprit? Not ineqalities in income tax relief, but the effects of NI contributions which successive governments have manipulated to hide the real rates of tax being paid on income. Rather than further complicating the UK tax code, let's simplify it and be honest about the rates of tax levied.