Headlines in today's Daily Mail, read over someone's shoulder while enduring the seemingly interminable wait in the supermarket queue, so forgive me if I do not quote precisely. The sense, though, is clear enough.

According to the Mail, Chancellor Osborne is considering in his forthcoming Budget making taxable the lump sum component of a pension fund taken on retirement.

Are you sure this was in the Mail Ann ? Nothing on their Website DAK if Mail only puts up news the day after it is published ?

This old chestnut is dragged out before most Budgets by iffy advisors trying to hustle people into taking their pension now, and generating buckets of commission.

I offer a bet that the Mail ( or whoever it is ) is not asserting this off their wn bat, but is attributing it to some twit on the edges of the field, or even to "General Expectations ".

If it WAS enacted, it would kill Pensions absolutely stone dead, and doing this just before the Government wanted to launch NEST would be plumb crazy. They would have to make NEST contributions compulsory or everyone would opt out.