Admit it. You're afraid of your 1040. That's OK. A lot of us are. And our tax fears, sometimes irrational, sometimes warranted, cause us to do a lot of dumb things when it comes to our annual returns.

Some people put off filing, some don't file at all. But fear doesn't have to paralyze you. Here are seven common tax terrors, how real they are (or aren't) and how you can overcome them.

Tax terror checklist These fears paralyze many taxpayers, but Bankrate's solutions can help you move through them.

7 reasons taxpayers tremble 1. Afraid I can't do my taxes myself 2. Afraid I'll overlook a tax break 3. Afraid I'll make a mistake that will cost me money 4. Afraid that my tax adviser is incompetent or a crook 5. Afraid I'll get audited 6. Afraid to e-file because my personal info could be lost or stolen 7. Afraid to file because I can't pay

1. Afraid I can't do my taxes myself
This fear, unfortunately, is too often justified. And it gets more true every tax season as federal lawmakers add provisions and pages year after year. The tax law publisher CCH Inc. notes that the 1913 tax code took up 400 pages in its "Standard Federal Tax Reporter." By 2007, CCH filled more than 67,000 pages of that document with tax law intricacies.

"The law is very complicated and filling out the returns is somewhat mind-boggling," says Robert Simon, partner at Eisner & Lubin in New York. "The media keeps telling everyone how difficult it is and people just get panicky. They sit down and start (the filing process) with all this in the back of their minds. I can understand why people would be afraid to do it."

Such fear, says Simon, is nothing to be embarrassed about.

"If you ask congressmen who actually wrote the laws, many don't do their own returns," he says. "They're writing policy, not looking at it from an accounting point of view."

The way our tax system works also adds to this fear.

"Many people aren't good with numbers, then once a year they wind up trying to deal with numbers," says Simon. "Any other time you spend money, before you walk out you have someone there telling you what you owe. But when you're doing your taxes, you're doing it yourself. You're telling the government what you owe them."

The remedy: Don't be afraid to ask for help. You have lots of preparer options, from a personal accountant who can fill out your return and help you plan throughout the year to franchise operations that gear up between Jan. 1 and mid-April. If your tax situation is not overly complicated, computer software might be enough to help you file with a bit more confidence. Take a look at your tax needs, then find the tax assistance that best meets them.

2. Afraid I'll overlook a tax break
Even folks who are brave enough to tackle their taxes on their own often face this fear. Again, it's not an unreasonable one. And once again, those folks in Washington, D.C., feed this fear.

Take, for example, the alternative minimum tax, or AMT. This parallel tax system can be quite costly for millions of filers, but rather than make a permanent change to the law, for the last several years Congress has opted instead for a temporary "patch." Even worse, the 2007 law change was enacted so late, it will cause a lot of grief not just for us filers, but also for the Internal Revenue Service. The slow lawmaking process has forced the 2008 filing season to be delayed until mid-February for up to 13.5 million taxpayers.