We report the first MP2 computational study of the Cl-center dot Arginine and Br-center dot Arginine complexes, with the clusters being systematically classified into conformational families prior to optimization. The canonical tautomers in particular adopt numerous conformeric structures with close relative energies. Conformer energy differences are of similar magnitude to the canonical-zwitterionic tautomer differences, indicating that it is essential to obtain reliable conformer energies to determine whether the global minimum structure is zwitterionic or canonical for these prototype anionic systems. The zwitterionic and canonical minima are found to be very close in energy for Br-center dot Arginine, whereas the canonical form is significantly lower for Cl-center dot Arginine. (C) 2013 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.