There is disclosed a hand-held tag attacher for attaching tags to merchandise and the like. The attacher includes a hopper for holding a stack of tags to be attached, a tag feeder for feeding one tag at a time into alignment with a needle at an attaching position, mechanism for advancing the needle through the tag at the attaching position, a push rod for pushing a bar of a fastener through the needle, and means for feeding fasteners one-by-one to the needle, wherein the tag feeder, the needle advancing mechanism, the push rod and the fastener feeding means operate in sequence by one-hand operation by the user.