Where are the tax planning opportunities in pensions?

Now that the dust has settled over the storm in this year's budget on the aborted introduction of the ‘pasty tax', perhaps it is a good time to focus on some of the actual opportunities that have arisen in relation to pensions. Prior to the budget, there were many scaremongers speculating on the demise of higher rate tax relief for individual pension contributions. I did not share this view personally, for two reasons. The first was that there had been substantial reductions in the previous year in both the annual and lifetime allowances and secondly, and probably more importantly, indiv...