  For many signals in the Standard Model including the Higgs boson, and for new
physics like Supersymmetry, $\tau$ leptons represent an important signature.
This work shows the performance of the ATLAS $\tau$ reconstruction and
identification algorithms. It will present a set of studies based on data taken
in 2010 at a center-of-mass energy of $\sqrt{s}$ = 7 TeV. We measured some of
the basic input quantities used for these identification methods from selected
reconstructed $\tau$ candidates and compared the results to the prediction of
different Monte Carlo simulation models. For early data taking a cut-based
identification method will be used. We also measured the background efficiency
for the cut-based $\tau$ identification.
