£25m stamp duty paid out over just one year in West Midlands

Stamp duty is charged when a property is bought for more than £125,000. It is applied at a rate of between one and seven per cent of the total price. Someone buying a house for £250,000 or less pays one per cent.

If the house goes to £250,001 or above the stamp duty jumps to three per cent, or at least £7,500.

In the Black Country, Staffordshire and Wyre Forest, £25,309,879 was paid in stamp duty in 2012/13.

Of 17,973 transactions, 1,299 had stamp duty of at least three per cent imposed, seven per cent of the total homes sold.

In Dudley £3,711,271 was paid in stamp duty overall while in Wyre Forest the figure was £2,158,576.

In South Staffordshire, where a total of £3,536,802 was paid, as many as 18 per cent of transactions were on homes costing more than £250,000, meaning stamp duty of at least £7,500 was paid.

And in Wolverhampton and Sandwell, homebuyers paid out £2,220,806 and £2,089,291 respectively.

Sandwell saw the smallest number of high priced sales, with just 1.1 per cent of homes incurring three per cent stamp duty.

In Walsall, £2,543,818 was paid in stamp duty overall.

Campaign group the TaxPayers' Alliance today said the 'unfair' double tax should be cut.

They said Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne promised to increase the stamp duty threshold in 2007 but have yet to deliver.

Matthew Sinclair, chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: "Owning your own home is an important milestone, but for many families it seems harder and harder to reach.

"Ministers have done nothing to ease the burden imposed by stamp duty, which is an unfair double tax that gets in the way of would-be first-time buyers and others thinking about moving.

"Instead they have made things worse with new thresholds and new, higher rates.

"The Government needs to act on ministers' rhetoric about getting people onto the property ladder and cut this unfair tax."

Gavin Williamson, MP for South Staffordshire, called for a change in the way stamp duty is calculated on higher value homes.

He said: "People currently pay three per cent stamp duty on the cost of the whole property once the price exceeds £250,000.

"I think a sensible reform would be to only pay the three per cent rate on the value over and above £250,000.

"That would mean people pay one per cent on the value below £250,000 and three per cent on the rest."