Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what recent estimate he has made of the number of low-income workers with reduced take-home pay following application of pensions tax relief by pension scheme operators.

HMRC has estimated the number of individuals earning below the personal allowance and making workplace pension contributions via Real Time Information (RTI) using net pay arrangements.

For 2017-18, when the personal allowance was £11,500, HMRC estimate the number of individuals to be 1.5 million.

HMRC’s Survey of Personal Income (SPI) and administrative data was used to produce the estimates. The 2017-18 SPI data (published in March 2020) is the latest year available.