Ireland has vowed the shut the door on international tax cheats, but some say it will be left slightly ajar.

Ireland’s Department of Finance says it is going to close the country’s biggest loophole, the “Double Irish”.

The Double Irish is the doorway through which multinational companies shift profits from high-tax countries to havens, via Irish shores.

They do this by transferring royalty payments for intellectual property to an Irish firm (for example, tech giant Apple uses Apple Operations International – a firm incorporated in Ireland, but not managed or controlled there), and then to a Irish-registered firm which is tax-resident in a tax haven nation, such as corporate-income tax-free Bermuda.

This means that with no corporate tax, users can legally cut their effective tax rate to ridiculous lows in some cases down to less than 2 per cent.

The Irish Finance Department’s new paper - Competing in a changing world: a road map for Ireland's tax competitiveness (PDF) – outlines a series of changes.

From January 2015, all new companies legally domiciled in Ireland must also be tax-residents there.

It is hoped this simple change will make the Double Irish impossible.

The moves are believed to be in response to growing press from the USA, the European Commission and OECD nation, which are working in concert to close avenues for multinationals to avoid paying.

The new changes following a related ruling in Ireland last year, which made it illegal for firms registered in Ireland to declare themselves stateless for tax purposes.

But at the same time that Ireland tries to close the Double Irish door, it may be opening another one.

Reform documents outline plans to introduce a 'knowledge box', which offers big incentives for companies to develop new technology in Ireland, so that the firms already placed there do not leave the country entirely.

The knowledge box is known in other countries as a ‘patent box’. The UK has a patent-box scheme which offers companies a 10 per cent tax rate on profits from new technology.

Some economists now warn that Ireland may look to undercut other countries’ schemes by bring in a minimal tax rate for the ‘knowledge box’, and allow some of the biggest perpetrators to continue depriving global economies.