Premise: Any taxpayer earning over £150,000 will no longer enjoy higher-rate tax relief, which is considered a substantial incentive to save for wealthy workers. From April 2011, anyone who earns £200,000 a year, for example, and pays the typical amount of 6 per cent of their salary into their company pension scheme will lose out on £200 a month or £2,400 a year.  Alistair Darling, when he announced the move in the Budget, insisted that just 1.5 per cent of taxpayers - the equivalent of about 450,000 people - would be hit, but experts argued that it would significantly damage the already beleaguered pensions industry, and cause many savers to think twice about investing in a pension.
Hypothesis: This increases tax for high earners.