Scrap pensions higher rate tax relief, says expert In a paper published on Monday, Mr Johnson calculates that over the last decade, the Government has given tax relief worth £358.6bn on employer and employee pension contributions, as well as relief on income tax and NI, in an attempt to encourage saving. According to UHY Hacker Young, the accountants, the number of companies offering SAYE schemes plummeted 15pc in the last year, despite Nick Clegg's repeated calls for increased employee share ownership. The schemes have withered thanks to corporate cost-cutting and the removal of key incentives for workers to use the scheme by HMRC, according to UHY Hacker Young. Roy Maugham, tax partner at the accountancy, said: "The Government is supposed to be encouraging employee ownership, but these figures show one of the key avenues to employee ownership is rapidly withering. SAYE schemes have historically been one of the best ways to encourage employees to invest in their employer. SAYE schemes can make investments both cheap and financially rewarding. Elsewhere, research by PriceWaterhouseCoopers showed gold-plated pension schemes still pose a risk to companies, with the new "economic reality" of low interest rates and high inflation making it unlikely that deficits will improve. The accountancy warns that companies may need to pay more, or for longer, into their final salary schemes, rather than rely on investment returns, to make good the deficit.