Logics of onshoring: brand geographies, corporate tax responsibility and common sense

Abstract

Since the global financial crisis of 2008 the issue of corporate tax avoidance has gained considerable political salience and public attention. This article explores the frameworks of meaning available for citizen-consumers to evaluate and form views on corporate tax behaviour. Building on research on the spatiality of taxation, I argue that brands and their spatial associations afford significant resources for making sense of the taxpaying responsibilities of multinational enterprises. Through the identification and analysis of three different forms of geographical entanglement–national origination, imbrication in the public domain, and territorialization of economic activity–I draw out the responsibilities that are inferred by these spatial associations. I propose that brands’ geographical entanglements tend to support a particular ‘logic of onshoring’, or common sense explanation concerning where corporations ought to pay tax, and I discuss the implications that the dominance of this logic may hold for the global politics of taxation. In drawing attention to the relationship between geographies of brands and geographies of taxation, the article furthers critical understanding of the role of space and place in everyday taxation imaginaries, and proposes an agenda for future research.