Internet Access Is Finally Permanently Tax Free in the U.S.
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I once argued with AT&T when they raised my bill by issuing a fee (which violated the contract and meant I wasn't responsible for an ETF if I canceled). The CSR was convinced it was a tax, their manager also convinced it was a tax that they had nothing to do with. I kept kept saying over and over that private companies cannot levy a tax. I swear nobody understood this. This speaks to how successful these large companies have been at confusing everyone with their billing practices.
When a company quotes me a fee, it's exactly how much I will be expected to give them. There's no "but wait, there's also X and Y and Z" to it.
> Why not do it like other countries and just include one,
> final price, which is what comes out of my pocket?
In the US, taxes vary by where you are. Your city, county, state, and the federal government can all levy taxes on just about anything they want. The only thing that keeps those entities from constantly raising taxes is that consumers know when a price hike is caused by the business raising its prices versus the local municipality increasing taxes.
If McDonald's wants to sell a burger for $1, it can advertise that price state-wide, and if you end up paying $1.25 in one city and $1.50 in another, that's a signal to citizens where their money is going when they buy the burger.
Years later I get a check in the mail for $200 from a class-action law suit related to this Sprint fee.
Always read the contract. They say specifically they reserve the right to raise the cost of the bill, but if they do they provide some amount of days for you to cancel the agreement.
The courts are essentially unavailable to consumers for anything where you sign an agreement these days. For example, take a look at your NetFlix agreement... or Verizon.
Ultimately the ETF never came and I went month-to-month. By the way, mentioning that you're recording the phone conversation changes drastically how a CSR treats you.
The best part is, I didn't even have the credit for the subsidy so I had to give them a 2 year deposit on the full price of the phones. But since THEY (technically) changed the contract by raising my monthly fee from 5 cents to 8 cents or something, I GOT THE DEPOSIT BACK!
I sold the phones on eBay and made a lot of money (for a high school kid).
I think the charge was called 'federal universal service charge' and there was a whole guide on how to use it to your advantage. You had to sound really confident and have your contract open to the relevant clauses so you could confidently read it to them over and over.
Not that there's much reason to not just state it outright, but I'm curious whether I have to give notice that I'm recording a conversation if notice of recording has already been given to me.
When I call up a company and they say the call may be recorded... they've just given me permission to record the call.
No.
"Some states currently require that all parties consent to the recording: California,[18] Connecticut,[19] Florida,[20] Hawaii (in general a one-party state, but requires two-party consent if the recording device is installed in a private place),[19] Illinois (debated, see next section), Maryland,[21] Massachusetts[19] (only "secret" recordings are banned[22]), Montana (requires notification only),[23] Nevada,[24] New Hampshire,[25] Pennsylvania,[26] and Washington (however, section 3 of the Washington law states that permission is given if any of the parties announces that they will be recording the call in a reasonable manner if the recording contains that announcement).[27]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_recording_laws#Unite...
The machine tells the caller that the call will be recorded. The caller stays on the line. Both parties have just consented to have the call recorded. They have not spoken about the disposition of that recording, but they're fully aware that this is no longer a completely private conversation.
As far as I can tell, there's no need for a second consent to have the call recorded on / copied to server 25126B and also server 952C... and so there should also be no need for an additional consent to have the call recorded on the caller's home PC.
If they're telling me the call may be recorded, they're telling me I may record the call. They've given explicit permission to me to record the call by telling me I may. Whether they choose to record it themselves, they've given themselves that option, and let me know it might happen. If I don't want to be recorded, I can hang up. Likewise, if they don't want to be recorded, they can hang up. Carrying on knowing what is happening after you've been informed of something seems to be about as consensual as it can get.
1. They typically don't say "this call may be recorded", they say "this call may be recorded for quality assurance purposes" or something along those lines. It should be obvious that the "may" here doesn't mean "anyone has permission to record it", but instead it means it might be recorded".
2. You're giving a completely uninformed opinion about a legal matter in which you are basically advising people to do something that might break their state's laws. Your "common sense" interpretation of a statement does not necessarily have anything at all to do with the actual legality. In such circumstances, you should always assume the worst, which in this case is that it is illegal for you to record the conversation unless you explicitly inform the other party.
>No.
Ok, well then when you get a Call Center rep on the phone, tell them that this phone conversation may be recorded.
There are states that specifically prohibit counties and cities from taxing residential use of gas and electricity.
So, in this case, the Feds got ahead of the states and enforced some uniformity. I find it sexy.
Edit: Note that this law has been in place since October of 1998. The "news" is that it no longer has an expiration date. It did previously, and as such, had to be periodically renewed.
This law is no different to any other tax law, and is therefore subject to the usual whimsy of Congress. Just this time it doesn't expire automatically.
It's very rare for them to actually allow a law to expire, and usually when it happens there's the same sort of big fight you'd expect over a bill to explicitly repeal whatever it is.
There must be other system asymmetries as well: filibusters, what else?
My spouse has a permanent residency card in the USA. It has an expiration date of 10 years. Perhaps you could call the immigration office and explain the meaning of the word to them as well? :)
https://www.us-immigration.com/blog/dont-let-that-green-card...
How do you prove you are a citizen to a police officer who thinks you're a green card holder? I assume American citizens don't have to carry papers.
It's also mad that it takes 6 months to renew. It takes 3 weeks to renew my British passport, less if you pay extra.
http://i.imgur.com/R2kidgy.jpg
I didn't return their modem and they are attempting to collect all kinds of fees and taxes on the sale of the modem (the gateway fee is expected, they appear to have applied service taxes to the sale of the gateway). After arguing with customer service and att supervisors and refusing to pay the 20%+ tax/fees (sales tax in my county is 9% and they continue to tell me to discuss with my local county), I am submitting a dispute to their shady collections partner. More effort than the $33.09 they are attempting to collect but it really struck a nerve that I have to assume most suck up and pay...
Internet laws still need hardening but good to hear congress is partially listening.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/02/congress-passes-p...
"I made sure the permanent ban on taxing Internet access was included in a trade enforcement package that passed this week."
I wonder what else was in that "package"?
So making something tax free/reduce taxes is more like a subsidy. By reducing taxes on basic amenities like food you're subsidizing the poor, as more of their money will be spent on basic things. When reducing taxes on something else, then you're essentially subsidizing that thing. It makes sense to subsidize internet access if you want to temporarily give a boost in adoption. But if you make that tax free status perpetual then you're saying that this is more important than everything else that doesn't get the tax free status.
Which is not a premise we should automatically accept without question or criticism.
> then every time we reduce the tax on something
This didn't reduce taxes on the Internet; it makes a statement that new taxes will not be added to the Internet. You could ask whether taxes could be lowered in some other area by adding taxes to the Internet. But this isn't a question of "where do we get the money that lets us lower the taxes on the Internet", not least of which because there weren't any to begin with.
Also worth noting that the economy is not a static set of transactions where taxes can be raised and lowered in proportion to keep tax revenue static. Sometimes people start buying less of one thing and more of another, which also changes tax revenue. And that shouldn't automatically result in an effort to start taxing the new thing. (For that matter, taxes themselves can cause people to change what they do, hence the concept of "excise" taxes.)
Yes, but it's a different question. If it makes sense to reduce the tax revenue you can generally lower taxes for all products. I'm concerned with the distribution of where taxes need to be put, not the amount.
> This didn't reduce taxes on the Internet; it makes a statement that new taxes will not be added to the Internet.
I'm not sure how it works in the US, but in the EU services (including internet access) are generally taxed with a VAT, just like every other product (excluding those with exceptions).
> Also worth noting that the economy is not a static set of transactions where taxes can be raised and lowered in proportion to keep tax revenue static.
There certainly are large fluctuations, but in the long term states try to balance expenditures and (tax-)income. When the scope of what the state does grows usually new taxes get introduced or taxes get raised.
> And that shouldn't automatically result in an effort to start taxing the new thing.
I say exactly the opposite: you can use taxing to make people buy more of something (some new tech you want to push) or less (e.g. cigarettes).
This isn't about reducing tax revenue; this is about not increasing it, and specifically about not creating a new tax.
If tax revenue has gone down in some other area, the presumption should not automatically be to raise taxes elsewhere to compensate.
> I'm not sure how it works in the US, but in the EU services (including internet access) are generally taxed with a VAT, just like every other product
Taxes in the US aren't nearly that uniform. Goods and services are not taxed universally at the federal level; many such goods and services have one-off special-case taxes. For instance, phone service has several taxes. Internet service, however, does not. This bill is a statement against adding new special-case taxes for the Internet, and against adding new taxes for goods and services purchased through the Internet specifically because of their method of purchase.
Imposing any kind of universal sales tax would be an entirely separate question.
> I say exactly the opposite: you can use taxing to make people buy more of something (some new tech you want to push) or less (e.g. cigarettes).
The US has various such subsidies and excise taxes (the latter of which I already mentioned). But this isn't an instance of that; this is simply choosing not to create a new tax on the Internet.
This is assuming that substitution effects invariably or above sufficient thresholds dominate over income effects, which in the case of addiction is a dubious proposition.
Tax incentives on the other side absolutely work as well. I have a LEAF parked outside instead of my old Mercedes diesel precisely because the feds and state combined to give me $10K in gov't cheese to facilitate the purchase. Sure, I wanted it, but paying $20K was a lot easier to justify and I wouldn't have bought it for the "full" $30K.
It's like people talking about the laffer curve, forgetting that when you sit on the left side cutting taxes reduces revenue.
The maximum benefit to the economy is achieved when economic distortion due to tax or subsidy is zero.
Consider the traditional supply vs demand plot:
$| \D S/ In an undistorted market,
| \ / the equilibrium point where
| \ / D and S intersect determine
A|----X the price (A) and quantity (B)
| /|\ that will be sold.
| / | \
| / | \
+---------
B #
$| \D S/ In a taxed market, the tax
C|--\ / creates a difference between
| |\ / what the consumer pays (C) and
A| | X what the producer gets (E).
| |/ \ As a result, the quantity sold
E|--/ \ drops to a lower value (F).
| /| \
+---------
F B #
$| \D S/ In a subsidized market, the subsidy
G|--\---/ creates a difference between
| \ /| what the consumer pays (H) and
A| X | what the producer gets (G).
| / \| As a result, the quantity sold
H|--/---\ increases to a higher value (I).
| / |\
+---------
B I #
In conclusion, a reduction in tax cannot in any way be reasonably considered equivalent to a subsidy.
Considering i have a pool of $50 to spend, I can buy more internet access now (or will begin to buy internet access) to the extent that the marginal dollars give the greatest utility over other products (which are taxed). Ex: imagine a internet plan is taxed such that it is $50 under the old taxed regime and $45 under the new taxed regime. Under the old regime, internet access purchases had to compete against other choices that cost $50. Under the new regime internet access will compete against $45 choices. Anyone currently not spending $50 on internet because other $50 dollar choices are better may shift away under the new regime because the $45 internet is a better choice than the still normally priced $50 choice.
As well, to the extent that the government spends tax money on anything ISP related, that expenditure is now a greater net subsidy than prior cases where some amount of tax offsets the subsidy (eg, $50 subsidy - $5 tax ==> $45 net subsidy in the old regime becomes $50 subsidy - $0tax ==> $50 net subsidy in the new regime)
Any party persuasive enough to know the total price and quantity traded in the market might be able to estimate deadweight losses by analyzing the market data before and after changes in the magnitude of manipulation, and extrapolating from the slopes of the two curves.
If a reduction in a tax is paid for by an increase in another tax, the effect is determined by the shapes of the supply and demand curves in those different markets, and is not easily calculated, as any given consumer or producer only knows a tiny fragment of the information needed.
That's the problem with the science of economics as a guide for political economic policies. No one gets mad about the numbers they can never calculate. Even though every tax and every subsidy inevitably results in the metaphorical equivalent of digging a huge hole, throwing tons of other people's money in, and lighting it on fire, no one really knows whether that bonfire is a net benefit or detriment to them, personally. Some people would be quite happy to burn $100k of other people's money if they got an extra $10k for themselves as a result. Some people would be happy to destroy $100k forever, just to reduce the total number of tobacco cigarettes sold by 0.5%.
As a thought experiment, imagine an economy with only two goods: Foo and Bar. Now copy it. In your copy, you tax Foo by 10% of its final sale price, and every last penny collected from that tax goes to subsidize Bar. Run both simulated economies in your head for a few years, and try to determine the effects.
If you lower taxes on something that means more people use it or buy it, which means there's a net gain of taxable activity as a rate approaches zero. Of course a zero tax doesn't follow those rules, but an increase of internet activity results in an increase of sales which means an increase in the amount of taxes paid by that business, an increase in the number of people hired and thus an increase in the amount those people pay in taxes.
So a zero Internet tax rate would necessarily increase economic activity resulting in an increase in overall revenue despite a lower effective rate.
The Keynesians ought there might disagree, but Friedman proved them wrong in the 1970s.
I know the left wing is in love with high taxes but that's based on the mistaken understanding that the government is a better arbiter of how to spend our money than we are as well as a political desire to give things to people that didn't earn them.
You have a natural right to communicate and perhaps a natural right to access a public system that others can access. But no one has an inherent right to tax someone, or to fund some service.
How can free speech be a right? Rights are arbitrarily assigned. Internet access is not a right in the US today but many point out that it could be given the importance of it.
There are some 18th century philosophers who talked about two types of rights but I can't remember the analogy.
But essentially, you were born with human freedom, even your ancestors and all of our ancestors in Africa. And these are the rights that existed prior to civilization, government, the Bill of Rights, the UN and the EU.
This is why some say they come from God, to distinguish them from the government. But you might as well say they came from the Higgs Boson because Jefferson et al were Deists.
The reason this is important is because why would you want to diminish your own personal sovereignty knowing what we all know about human nature and power?
This is why the Bill of Rights says Congress shall make no law restricting Freedom of Speech. It does not grant or create a right or privilege. It acknowledges it.
The organic law (Dec. of Indepedence) declares this in the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Deny this to an Enlightenment-thinker, and prepare for silent revolution.
We should resist the utopian temptation to accept the falsehood that rights are privileges. In the 20th century in the United States, wealthy idealists who often doubled as Marxists created the American Historical Association (historians.org), and promoted the idea that the centralization of power was always a good thing, i.e. collectivism. And to do that, they taught that truth was relative and that natural rights and classical liberalism was irrelevant in the face of supranational political utopias.
This is covered in Professor Allen Bloom's book, "The Closing of the American Mind."
We are all from Africa and we all have natural rights. So since the US was the first nation to acknowledge this, and since the EU does not acknowledge natural rights and in fact is a bureaucratic nightmare, then it is fair to suggest that we all are in fact "African Americans", free and individually powerful since our ancestors lived in Ethiopia and Somalia.
Maybe you're thinking from some perspective I'm not seeing, but this sounds odd to me.
Prior to the telephone, geographically separated people were days, weeks, or months apart when communicating with letters. The change from that to being to call people on a whim must have been life changing.
http://www.cepr.org/sites/default/files/policy_insights/Poli...
In England some items are zero rated, (most food, children's clothes, books etc) and other items have lower rates.
> and people are just fine with that
There's a pretty vigorous campaign to move tampons and pads to the zero rate.
That does not exist in the EU any more. Only products that did not have VAT at the time of introduction of the VAT system can retain it. Austria has no VAT free items as an example.
> There's a pretty vigorous campaign to move tampons and pads to the zero rate.
Pointless campaign because it cannot be done. You cannot remove VAT under EU regulations from an item.
Books, most food etc are still zero rated in the UK. It's fairer, VAT is a regressive tax, and this helps a little.
There's a referendum coming up to do just that...
And if they leave the EU they can do whatever they want. But we can also discuss a few other purely hypothetical situations.
Er, not quite. I for one would rather see VAT disappear. It's a regressive tax, it hits the poor (and start-ups) disproportionately, and it's basically just a huge "get out of jail" card for lazy lawmakers who won't dare to tax the rich. Which is why it is so "popular" around elites of every country.
Think about someone who has a billion dollars. Not income, already in the bank. Without a consumption tax, they can spend all of it without paying any taxes.
Now think about someone who has student loans or a mortgage (i.e. someone not rich enough to pay for it outright). With an income tax they have to pay income tax on the money they're using to pay back the loan principal. Switch to a consumption tax and they don't.
So where does this idea that consumption taxes are regressive come from? The theory is supposed to be that the rich spend less of their income than the poor. First small problem, that's only true for the super rich. Someone making $120K/year is pretty well spending it all on a big house and a new car and sending their kids to college. It's the people who have a billion dollars and make ten million a year in interest who aren't spending anywhere near that much.
But those same people also don't have anywhere near that much in "taxable" income because they have fancy accountants and the investments they own don't have definite values until sold, which they never are. So they can make a million dollars in interest without paying any tax, and then they can use a different million dollars in principal to spend on anything they like, also without paying any tax.
But if we had a consumption tax on cars and yachts and airfare, they would be paying that. So which one is the regressive one?
But even with VAT they almost don't, that's the thing. Because they can afford not-even-that-fancy accountants (or just one), they can simply reclaim the tax as business expense or shuffle most of it downstream to whoever is buying their services (there are bazillions of rules, of course, but they are not that hard to bend). People without accountants and company ownership cannot do that.
Say a "normal" guy buys car X, paying £1000 -- 200 of those go in tax. A "vat-savvy" guy buys the same car through his company, pays £1k, then claims VAT as a business expense. In practice, he's just bought the same car for £800. This is widespread, and obviously frowned upon by tax authorities, but it's like emptying the sea with a spoon. (Note: cars are actually more regulated than other items, exactly because of this sort of trick happening since the beginning of time on a well-known expensive item, but there are plenty of equivalent items that go undetected).
> The theory is supposed to be that the rich spend less of their income than the poor.
It's not just that, it's that in absolute terms the exact same thing is taxed in exactly the same way for rich and poor alike. That is regressive, like all flat taxes. It wouldn't be if and only if rich people only ever bought more expensive luxury items, which is not true in practice: they buy a lot of stuff in the same malls working-class people use, but they pay the exact same flat tax on each sweater.
> So which one is the regressive one?
It's a false dichotomy -- you can (and should) use multiple types of taxation at the same time. It's pretty clear that personal income taxes are not sufficient, but the answer is not removing those to introduce flat consumption taxes which are even worse in real terms; the answer is to increase taxation on capital profits, rent and property, which is where the real wealth lies.
Tax theory is old and fairly well-understood from a systemic perspective, but obviously nobody wants to piss off their political donors, whereas little people are easily gamed.
Which is not tax avoidance, it's tax fraud. If you allow the rich to commit tax fraud then it doesn't really matter what kind of tax code you have.
And it's a lot easier to catch tax fraud for consumption taxes than income taxes because the thing being taxed is physically in your jurisdiction where you can find it and see how it's being used.
> It's not just that, it's that in absolute terms the exact same thing is taxed in exactly the same way for rich and poor alike. That is regressive, like all flat taxes.
That's the fallacy. It isn't.
Suppose everyone gets the same $5000 worth of government services and everyone pays a flat 10% tax (of any kind). A rich person pays $10,000 on $100,000 and a poor person pays $2500 on $25,000. The result is progressive because the rich person is down $5000 ($5000 - $10,000) and the poor person is up $2500 ($5000 - $2500). If you double the tax rate and the level of government services then the rich person is down $10,000 and the poor person is up $5000, etc. You can increase or decrease how progressive it is by setting the tax rate but there is no point (above 0% tax) that there is not more money going into the poor person's pocket than coming out when everyone is paying a flat tax and everyone is receiving a fixed quantity in government services.
> It's pretty clear that personal income taxes are not sufficient, but the answer is not removing those to introduce flat consumption taxes which are even worse in real terms; the answer is to increase taxation on capital profits, rent and property, which is where the real wealth lies.
Taxes on earned income are worse than consumption taxes for the reasons I've already mentioned. Taxes on investment income are nice in theory but are extraordinarily difficult to collect because you can't locate "investment income" on a map the same as you can a car or a refrigerator, so they end up actually being regressive because middle-income people who don't own international corporations have to pay them while high-income people who do own international corporations don't.
The problem with taxes on property and rent is that they increase the cost of housing, which is also regressive. Property taxes make it more difficult to afford a home and forces more people into renting (which also increases rents), while a tax on rent causes more rental properties to be sold to occupants, which is good for middle income people, but that reduces the supply of rental properties (and therefore increases rents) for people who don't have the credit to buy a home, which is very bad for lower income people.
Consumption taxes are good because they're simple and hard to scam. You buy a sweater, you pay the tax, so does everybody else. Then the government gets a percent of everybody's expenditures and gives it back out as a fixed amount of services, which is progressive as above. If you want it to be more progressive all you have to do is either raise the tax rate, or spend the tax money on things that disproportionately benefit the poor (like public education).
I generally agree with your argument, but there's an argument to be made that rich people benefit more from eg protection of property by the police, because they do have more property.
(Not all that convincing to me, but it's a decent argument.)
A really nice tax is a tax on the unimproved value of land---it's fully born by the owner of the land and (for economic reasons) can not be passed on to the renter. Henry George had a point.
That isn't a problem on the tax side, it's a problem on the services side. (And that specific example is almost irrelevant because enforcing property rights is such a tiny proportion of government expenditures.) If the rich are getting $5500 worth of government services and the poor are getting $4500, then change what services the government provides.
Although notice that it's still progressive even in that case as long as the difference is small: If the rich pay $10,000 in taxes and get $5500 in government services while the poor pay $2500 in taxes and get $4500 in government services, there is still a transfer of wealth from rich to poor.
A good way to dispense with the calculations is to make the primary "government service" a basic income. You don't get $5000 in "government services," you just get $5000.
A somewhat similar argument can be made against minimum wage: even if it works perfectly well, it's people shopping at Walmart that pay for the increases compared to market wage. People shopping at Walmart are probably poorer than the national average, so why not make the overall population pay in eg negative income taxes or a basic income to help poor Walmart employees. (A slightly more sophisticated argument would yield a similar conclusion, even if Walmart's stockholders were bearing the difference between market wages and minimum wages.)
It should come to mind to question the concept of taxing everything. But unfortunately, for many people it doesn't. Imagine the economic growth if VAT were eliminated but then Hollande might have to move into a smaller palace and the 60% of French workers who work for the state would have to take a two week vacation instead of a month.
Erm, what? The VAT is clearly labelled on every product and not at all hidden. In fact, if you grab any receipt in Europe you will see the different VAT rates very clearly on the receipt. That's important anyways because in some cases you can claim it back (for instance company expenditures).
Not sure about this one, does this only apply to Federal Taxes? I would still have to pay CA tax when buying from Amazon right?
There is a separate fight going on around local taxes for items bought on the internet. At the moment, an online business is able to charge sales tax only for sales that are shipped to a state that it has a presence in.
Amazon, being what it is, has a presence in every US state...so they tack on the appropriate sales tax for wherever you live.
And, Amazon is lobbying for legislation that would push every online retailer to do the same, even if they don't have a presence in the shipping destination state.
Edit: It's pretty complex: http://blog.taxjar.com/charging-sales-tax-rates/
I've got directv and AT&T, AT&T owns both. I'm revisiting my bills now.
Taxes are one aspect, but surprisingly the wiggle room in bills, despite "fees" is pretty large. The constant need for negotiation gets a bit old.
I was under the impression that only the Senate passed this permanent ban.
Considering the support, and the fact that Obama hasn't threatened to veto it, he probably won't, which makes the bill likely a done deal.
That said, the idea that bills are agreed upon by both houses is maybe how it's generally done, but since (at least) the passage of the ACA (and possibly earlier), definitely not how it has to be done.
I don't get it!
In the early days of the US, there were no sales taxes...for 140+ consecutive years. The first sales taxes were put in place by US states as a way to deal with shrinking revenues during the Great Depression in the 1920's. They started with only taxing goods, not services.
In general, services are still taxed much less often than physical goods. For example, most states do not tax the services of doctors, dentists, or attorneys.
Then, there are US states that have no state sales tax of any kind at all. This, of course, makes sales tax appear arbitrary to people in states that do have them.
Edit: On this: "Why not electricity or water instead and why should these exemptions apply to everyone?" ... my best guess is that the cat was already out of the bag there. It's difficult to roll back something that's already happening in a widespread way. This law regarding taxing internet access has been in place since 1998, before many were using the internet...ahead of any broad taxation on it.
I agree such taxes are arbitrary and quite stupid. That isn't my question however.
My question is about why the provision of Internet access should not be taxable like everything else. You pay taxes on the provision of other goods and services, including utilities. Why exempt the Internet? If the argument comes down to ensuring universal access to basic utilities, why not exempt all utilities? More, why should the exemptions apply to everyone instead of just the disadvantaged?
The entire idea strikes me as completely bizarre and alien.
Here’s some good news: Right now most Americans pay $0 in taxes to connect to the Internet.