The emergency measure I took  with my pension ahead of the Budget – and I urge

As the Budget on November 26 draws closer, the chorus of financial experts warning us not to act now – based on what we suspect or fear it may contain – grows ever louder.

And in general, they are right.

For example, you could come to regret taking a tax-free lump sum from your pension because you are worried Chancellor Rachel Reeves will change the rules, if she then doesn’t.

But last year, I acted on a hunch ahead of the Budget – which turned out to be wrong – and have absolutely no regrets.

So much so that this year, I’m doing the same again, only I’ve fine-tuned how I go about it.

Just ahead of the Budget, I’m putting a lump sum in my pension to take advantage of the current tax relief rules.

Tax relief, which is designed to encourage us to save for retirement, is almost impossibly generous – and I fear ripe for the chop. Normally, if someone offered you an investment guaranteed to almost triple your money overnight, I’d tell you to run a mile. But pension saving is one surprising exception.

Contributions made into a pension get income tax relief. This means that if you’re a basic-rate taxpayer and put £80 into your pension, it will be topped up to £100 by the taxman. Higher and additional-rate taxpayers need only put £60 and £55 in respectively to get £100.

This takes you back to the position before tax was paid. On top of that, if you save into a workplace pension, you benefit from contributions from your employer as well. If you put in a minimum of 5 per cent, they should put in 3 per cent, but many employers are more generous than this.

And, if your pension is part of a salary sacrifice scheme, you’ll save on National Insurance contributions as well. This scheme allows you to exchange part of your salary for a pension contribution of the same size, resulting in a lower NI bill for you and your employer (which may keep its saving for itself, or share it with you).

Bundle that all together and, for a higher-rate taxpayer, every £60 post tax you put into your pension could be bumped up to £162 if your employer matches your contributions – and that’s before any potential investment returns.

This comes from higher-rate pension tax relief turning £60 into £100, plus a £60 matched employer contribution and for those who can use salary sacrifice, an extra £2 benefit from avoiding 2 per cent higher NI contributions.

Of course, you should have already taken maximum advantage of employer contributions. But even if you have done that, £60 after tax paid into a pension is turned into £102.

When you eventually take money out of your pension, you will pay income tax on it. But most higher- rate taxpayers become basic-rate in retirement so they benefit from a 40 per cent tax break when they put money in and pay only 20 per cent when they take it out. Financial experts are warning this generous tax perk could be under threat in next month’s Budget – and it’s no wonder.

When other tax breaks to encourage saving and investing are being slashed or eroded away, the generosity of pension tax relief looks increasingly exposed.

The amount of capital gains you can earn in a single tax year has been slashed to £3,000 from £12,300 just a couple years ago.

The Isa allowance has been stuck for eight years. Had it risen in line with inflation, it would be £26,300 today. The personal savings allowance that allows basic rate taxpayers to earn £1,000 of interest tax-free has not risen since it was introduced in 2016. If it had, it would now be worth closer to £1,380 a year.

No wonder so many believe it’s only a matter of time until pension tax relief suffers a similar fate, especially as it ‘costs’ the Government around £50billion a year. Of course, the Chancellor may leave it untouched. I’ve reported on Budget statements for more than 15 years and, every time, financial experts raise the possibility that pension tax relief will be meddled with. And yet it has never happened.

Many a Chancellor has considered it and then backed down when they realise the complexity involved and how much they would upset higher earners in the public sector, particularly, such as some doctors.

I’m willing to take the risk and put a lump sum in my pension now because, really, it’s win-win.

If the rules change, I’ll be grateful I took advantage of the current generosity while I could. And if they don’t, I’m unlikely to regret topping up my pension…