The chancellor is under pressure to reform the stamp duty system in tomorrow’s pre-budget report as figures from Halifax show that consumer bills have soared because of the government’s failure to link thresholds to house prices.

Revenue & Customs generated £4.2 billion from this tax in 2005/2006 – 582 per cent more than the £675m it received in 1996/1997.

Critics are calling for the thresholds to be increased, and for the current slab system of charging to be replaced by a fairer tiered model.

Stamp duty is not levied on properties below £125,000, but 1 per cent is charged on those between £125,001 and £250,000. The slab rules mean that buyers who buy a home for up to £250,000 must pay 1 per cent on the whole sum, rather than just the value of the house over the £125,000 threshold.

Stamp duty is charged at 3 per cent on properties priced between £250,001 and £500,000 and 4 per cent for those above £500,000.

The £250,000 and £500,000 thresholds have remained unchanged since Gordon Brown introduced them in 1997, despite a 162 per cent increase in house prices. Mr Brown increased the lowest threshold from £60,000 to £120,000 in 2004. This went up to £125,000 in his budget earlier this year. However, with the average house price now £184,593, the majority of homebuyers are hit by the tax.

Figures from the Council of Mortgage Lenders show that 56 per cent of first time buyers are now paying stamp duty, compared with 48 per cent a year ago. The worst affected are those caught out by the higher thresholds – 80 per cent of the rise in total residential stamp duty over the last five years has been due to an increase in the amount raised at the 3 per cent and 4 per cent rates.

Around 17 per cent of properties in England – 2.6 million - now fall into the 3 per cent stamp duty band, according to Halifax and it expects this to rise by 35 per cent to 5.4 million over the next five years. About 3 per cent - 400,000 - are currently above the £500,000 threshold and this could more than double to 900,000 by 2012.

The impact of these thresholds is considerable. Someone paying £249,000 for a property faces a stamp duty bill of £2,490, but this rises to £7,530 for somewhere priced at £251,000. Similarly, the stamp duty on a £499,000 property is £14,970, but leaps to £20,040 on a house costing £501,000.

Martin Ellis at Halifax said: More and more parts of the country are being hit by stamp duty as it has not kept pace with house price inflation. We call on the government to raise the stamp duty thresholds in line with the increase in house prices over the past decade. We believe it should also commit to index linking all property related tax thresholds to house price inflation in the future."

If stamp duty had risen in line with house price inflation, the £125,000 threshold would now be £179,000, while the 3 per cent band would apply to properties over £600,000 and the 4per cent charge would only be levied on properties worth more than £1.3m.

The government is also urged to graduate the amount house buyers are charged.

Ray Boulger at John Charcol, a mortgage broker, said: "The current stamp duty system is both hugely unfair and it significantly distorts the housing market around all the threshold levels. One obvious way to reform it would be to mirror the way income tax works so that the higher percentage rates of tax are only payable on the amounts above each threshold. So a person buying a house for £300,000 would pay 1per cent on the value between £1250,000 and £250,000 and 3per cent on the remaining £50,000."