A search for neutral Higgs bosons in proton-proton collisions at the LHC at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV is presented. The results are based on a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.6 fb$^{-1}$ recorded by the CMS experiment. The search uses decays of the Higgs bosons to tau pairs, including the cases where the Higgs boson is produced in association with a b-quark jet (MSSM search) or two forward jets from vector boson fusion Higgs boson production (SM search), or where the tau pair has large transverse momentum (SM search). No excess is observed in the tau-pair invariant-mass spectrum. The resulting upper limits on the Higgs boson production cross section times branching fraction to tau pairs, as a function of the pseudoscalar Higgs boson mass, yield stringent new bounds in the MSSM parameter space, excluding values of $\tan\beta$ as low as 7.8 at a $m_A=$160 GeV. In the SM case, the data exclude at 95\% CL a Higgs boson with a production cross section between 2.8 and 6.3 times that in the standard model.

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