Do I have to pay the internet installation charges for my home's company internet?
"Of course you don't have to pay them - you just might not like the result. As a matter of law - given that I am not a lawyer - I am not aware of any requirement for a company to pay employees business-related expenses. An example might be having a cell phone, and according to this article companies aren't required to pay for you to have a cell phone even if they require you have one and use it as part of your employment. The primary areas where law does exist relates to company uniforms with a logo (in a very limited number of US states) and necessary personal safety equipment (in California and maybe only few other states). All other tool requirements for a job are not prohibited by law, so long as they are not illegally discriminatory (such as requiring people of a certain race or sex to buy something but no one else, etc). So a company can require all sorts of things, from having an internet connection to cell phone to laptop to specialty tools and equipment of all sorts, and they are even allowed to deduct the cost of some things from your pay - just so long as you still get paid minimum wage after the deductions. With all that said, the company's previous payments of fees and willingness to pay a monthly internet fee does not obligate them to pay other fees too, such as moving/installation/etc. They may even decide to no longer provide internet service at their expense and just require you to provide it as a condition of employment. You can insist on it with your employer, and if you don't have an employment contract that forbids it they can fire you or possibly even deduct it from your pay anyway (and this reason might not be one that allows you to collect unemployment insurance benefits - but you'd need to check with an expert on that). You can refuse to pay AT&T directly, and they can cancel the internet service - and your employer can then do the same as in the previous condition. Or you can choose to pay it - or ask your employer to split the cost over a few checks if it is rather high - and that's about it. Like the cost of anything else you have to pay  - from your own food to your computer, clothes, etc - it's best to just consider it your own ""cost of doing business"" and decide if it's still in your interest to keep working there, and for something to consider in future pay negotiations! You may also qualify for an itemized Employee Business Expense deduction from the IRS, but you'll need to read the requirements carefully and get/keep a receipt for such expenses." It appears so. I suppose you could try saying that you don't want to pay for it and won't have Internet installed, but that could be detrimental to your career. There is no law that says your company has to pay for your Internet unless you have some kind of contract with them that says you will. If anything, your best option might be to try to claim it is a business expense and deduct it on your taxes.
I have comcast and hate their guts. From the time they bought the local cable system a couple of years ago they have raised prices at least 10% a year and at the same time cut 2-4 channels every year. Now they want customers to get a bunch of new equipment, which they claim is free, like the cable modem was free until one month they started charging extra for it every month. I'm not paying any more for their crap.   I've let go of everything but the local channels and tomorrow or the next day it will take MORE equipment to even get those. But I've ordered the equipment necessary to get channels off the air.   Then once they start messing with my internet I'll try AT&amp;T and satellite internet or even go back to dialup.   Cause I'm not paying MORE for less, not paying MORE for crap. Hell, half of what you pay is for sports and I never watch sports.   I felt sorry when so many good newspapers started going under. But I feel no sympathy at all for comcast. They are like the Bank of America of cable TV. When they die people will cheer.   TV is run by greedy people. I remember when cable started. There were no ads. They made their money from cable subscriptions. Then they decided they wanted MORE money than that and added ads. They can make plenty of money without ads. But there is no end to their greed. So screw them. I feel like that any full answer has multiple facets:  **Free for 7 years:** I'm currently in KC, and most of the people in my area are opting in for the free service. So if I were able to get fibre (my neighborhood didn't get enough votes), it would cut my $40/mo bill from Time Warner and my service would increase if anything. That's a huge cut, and it pays for itself ($300 set up fee) in the first year. Then over the next 7 years it saves me over $3000 in bills. For some company like Time Warner to offer this, they'd lose a large amount of service. Free mediocre internet is a huge threat to companies whose top sellers are expensive mediocre internet.  **Lawsuits:** Like other people have stated, it's pretty impossible to become an actual competitor to these companies. The other ISPs (namely TWC and Comcast) fight anybody who pops up. There are minor providers in some of the outer suburbs, but they can't offer near the speed that a fibre solution provides.  **City Approval:** Even Google ran into issues with this. Cities have to approve things like new fibre lines, and if they don't you're pretty much stuck. Overland Park, a wealthier suburb of Kansas City, were really dragging their feet on getting Google approved. Google just decided to take the deal off the table. Google is such a big name, however, that people in Overland Park freaked out at their city council and I don't know what they did, but Google has opened up signups for them now. If this was a no-name company, though, they would have been out of luck and just been barred from entry altogether. City council problems are actually pretty interesting.  **Cost Effectiveness and Overhead:** Building a fibre network in KC is a pretty big cost. There are others around, but really only in the commercial areas. So whatever company wants to compete with Google has to go without making a profit for several, several years. In order to speed up that time (and save the company) they'd have to raise prices, and less people would be interested in their product.  Google really pulled off something huge, here. I'm pretty excited for what their doing (even if my stupid neighbors didn't sign up and I don't get to reap the benefits). I'm interested to see what effects this has on a larger scale when they start moving to other cities. You are both right and wrong.   A few key things   - I'm not charging the government body I work for, it's a free implementation  - I ensured I do all the work on my own time, not company time. I live somewhere where most government employees work multiple jobs, so this isn't uncommon. In fact, my government body actually does often hire contractors who are also employed.   - I don't live in the US, things are somewhat less different where I am.  - It is certainly not illegal, and I would even argue that it is even somewhat ethical. My work saved my employer (the tax payer) a significant amount of money, which is a net positive. The service is of high quality, and I did not break any employment agreements or laws in the process.   - I hired a lawyer to double check everything. There are a few standard ways: One thing to keep in mind is that you'll usually be charged a wire and/or service fee for the tranfer. I kind of answered this as well, but I'll re-word it  Too expensive. Fiber cables are expensive to place, takes a lot of time, and nobody is willing to pay it; or at least not the people that COULD front the bill. (Being Comcast or TWC)  Cities aren't willing to help much unfortunately.  A great story of what happens when a city does help with these installation fees is Oldes, Alberta in Canada. The city helped install all the wires and now has one of (of not the fastest) Internet connection in the country. "If you are talking about a home office, you don't ""charge"" the business anything. If the area is used exclusively as an office you pro-rate by square footage just the actual expenses.  TurboTax recent published an article ""Can I Take the Home Office Deduction?"" which is a must read if you don't understand the process. (Note: I authored said article.)" That's a good question. Are these internet companies actually natural monopolies ? I'm unsure about that, but if it is true they fall  into the category of enterprises such as utilities that many have argued should be removed from private ownership and placed in some collective ownership. The record of privately owned utilities has been truly dismal from a public interest point of view. "Your argument is everything like the faucet.  [You wrote](https://www.reddit.com/r/business/comments/6msutw/tech_firms_unite_for_net_neutrality_protest/dk4q7vr/):  *""Which is, for example, why my current Comcast service is ""unlimited bandwidth"".""*  Your faucet entitles you to unlimited water.  I say unlimited water because you cannot have ""unlimited bandwidth""; bandwidth is actually fixed by the properties of physics.  You meant to say unlimited flow through the bandwidth that's available.  I addressed that directly.  Yet you saw fit to make another douchey (**in bold, this time**) comment in response.  Have a downvote." "Do you know if you were approached by a carrier or a tower vendor?  Edit/addendum:  As someone in the telecommunications industry, I will say that you should NOT lease to a vendor who will sublease the space to the phone companies for a profit.  Depending on the availability of space, the population of the area, and the value of the location, and the amount and size of hardware to be installed, the rental pricing can vary wildly.  A cell site on a choice tall building in Chicago, NYC, Boston, LA, etc., can go for over $25000 per year (more in the case of rental of inside equipment room).  On the other hand, renting space on a church steeple in the middle of a low population rural town, with the equipment installed in a gated paddock at ground level, may only net around $1500 per month.  A ""small cell"" site, which is actually small enough to put on a lamp post or utility pole, can go for around $250-750 per month.  A turf contractor/tower vendor actually leasing a chunk of land to build a structure whose space will be leased out to telecoms should be expected to pay between $2500 and 8000 per month depending on the value of your site.  This value is determined by land form details like elevation, nearby tall forests (can the tower ""see"" over the tree line), terrain contours, and need (local population/tourist/traveler numbers).  Carriers prefer to lease from vendors rather than building their own structures, but roof top sites are a different story.  Carriers are generally more than happy to work with you to lease a portion of your tall building's roof.  FYI...  If they offer to compensate you for the electrical requirements if they cannot get their own meter in, don't worry.  A cell site uses less than 1000 watts, which translates to about $.10-15 per hour in most locations." In general, you can only be charged for services if there is some kind of contract. The contract doesn't have to be written, but you have to have agreed to it somehow. However, it is possible that you entered into a contract due to some clause in the home purchase contract or the contract with the home owners' association. There are also sometimes services you are legally required to get, such as regular inspection of heating furnaces (though I don't think this translates to automatic contracts). But in any case you would not be liable for services rendered before you entered into the contract, which sounds like it's the case here. "Can she claim deductions for her driving to and from work? Considering most people use their cars mostly to commute to/from work, there must be limits to what you can consider ""claimable"" and what you can't, otherwise everyone would claim back 80% of their mileage. No, she can't. But if she's driving from one work site to another, that's deductible whether or not either of the work sites is her home office. Can she claim deductions for her home office? There's a specific set of IRS tests you have to meet. If she meets them, she can. If you're self-employed, reasonably need an office, and have a place in your house dedicated to that purpose, you will likely meet all the tests. Can I claim deductions for my home office, even though I have an official work place that is not in my home? It's very hard to do so. The use of your home office has to benefit your employer, not just you. Can we claim deductions for our home internet service? If the business or home office uses them, they should be a deductible home office expense in some percentage. Usually for generic utilities that benefit the whole house, you deduct at the same percentage as the home office is of the entire house. But you can use other fractions if more appropriate. For example, if you have lots of computers in the home office, you can deduct more of the electricity if you can justify the ratio you use. Run through the rules at the IRS web page." * Building out infrastructure is time-consuming and labor-intensive. You also have no guarantee that because you put fiber to every house in a neighborhood, that every person will sign up for your service. * Building out infrastructure requires permits from the municipality and surveying (underground wiring? On new poles? On existing poles? etc). * It requires tying into existing networks (more infrastructure, permitting, and commercial contracts.  * If you want to offer telephone services, that requires more network interfacing and, permitting, and has additional requirements, as phone service has legacy legal requirements. * If you want to offer TV services, you need more infrastructure, and commercial contracts with the TV channels.  In many municipalities, existing providers (IE Comcast, TWC) have exclusive contracts with the city that say no one else can come in and build a network.  **TLDR:** Legal contracts, commercial contracts, and the expense of building out the actual infrastructure make it pretty much impossible to create your own ISP, unless you have regular money bonfires (like Google does). They are a business. You're not a corporation. They paid you more than $600 during the year, so they're supposed to send 1099 to you and the IRS about it. They need your taxpayer certification (W9) for that. They were supposed to ask for it before they paid you, but yes - they're supposed to ask for it. I'm really unsure what you are trying to tell me. I don't see how knowing CEOs would aid me in forming an opinion on this issue.  Your second statement is simply foolish, shares of a company, represent ownership. Therefore shareholders are the owners.  These shareholders elect a board, this board acts like a proxy between the managers (CEO's) and the owners (shareholders).  This is how every public company operates.   The problem that arises is that managers have an incentive to act in their own best interests, not in the interests of shareholders.  So to solve this manager compensation is aligned with company performance so that if the shareholders are better off the managers are better off. Of course nobody would have believed me, that was the height of the bubble. Everybody was leveraged to hell thinking that housing prices would continue to rise, especially the people who bought houses they couldn't afford. Then when the bubble popped, there is this massive credit crunch and all of a sudden spending and investment dry up. Now there is near 0 interest rates and that still isn't enough to stimulate the economy, so inflation is very low and people are sitting on liquid assets because there is no sense in investing.