There are some fundamental actions you can take to protect your identity from theft.

When you post off your tax form, ensure that any personal documents are invisible from the outside. Why make it easy? Don’t! Wrap your document in a neutral sheet of paper to make it even less visible.

It is best to put your outgoing tax form straight into a secure mailbox.

If it’s at a post office, that’s even better. If you do mail it from home, do not use the “mailbox flag”, which will only serve to alert cruising identity thieves that there may be some mail of interest to them. Do not put out your mail at night, when there’s no pick up until the next day.

Even the kind of pen you use to write checks can improve your security. Use a black uni-ball 207 gel pen when you write important documents.

The black ink in the pen is bold and contains pigments that absorbs into paper fibers.

You should shred all your old personal documents.

Throwing them straight in the trash may seem the way to dispose of them, but that can simply be the in-tray of an identity thief. Use a criss-cross paper shredder first, and then throw them away.

Many people now do their taxes online. Protect your PC by a firewall and use secure software. Do not use your children’s PC for financial or personal information, like banking, taxes or bookkeeping. Kids like to download stuff, and any of it might have a malicious virus attached.

Keep your Social Security Number to yourself unless you’re quite clear who it’s going to. Don’t write your SSN on any checks.

Make sure that anyone you ask to help you with your taxes is someone you can trust.

Ask the Better Business Bureau if in doubt.

When you write a check to the IRS, make it payable to the Internal Revenue Service. The initials IRS can be manipulated by thieves, say to TRS, and then they can cash to their own Thomas R. Smith account.

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Gus Taperman holds a Bachelor's degree in Commerce and completed his master's in Business Administration . He is working as writer and financial consultant to find a Personal loans, Debt consolidation, home equity loans at cheap rates visit www.taperman.com