* Ireland says little impact from US tax reform plan
* Dublin AmCham: Obama move could have been worse
By Andras Gergely
DUBLIN, May 5 (Reuters) - U.S. plans to remove tax incentives encouraging multinationals to locate jobs overseas are significant but are not expected to cause a large fall in foreign investment in Ireland, Irish officials said on Tuesday. President Barack Obama plans to tighten rules allowing companies to defer paying taxes on profits made overseas as long as those earnings are ploughed back into the foreign subsidiaries, he said on Monday.
The White House, which aims to save $210 billion over the next decade through a range of tax reforms, mentioned Ireland in particular as a top source of U.S. companies' foreign profits.
"It may make some decisions a bit more cautious," said Barry O'Leary, chief executive of Ireland's Industrial Development Agency. "We're not overly concerned, we did expect deferral could have been under greater attack," he added.
As signalled in his presidential campaign, Obama plans to tighten the deferral rule by prohibiting firms from taking deductions on the expenses for their overseas operations until they have booked their profits in the United States.
The finance ministry said it would study the details of Obama's proposals as they emerge, declining to comment further.
The White House singled out Ireland -- where the corporate tax rate is 12.5 percent -- Bermuda and the Netherlands as three "small, low-tax countries" where nearly one-third of all foreign profits reported by U.S. companies in 2003 came from.
But the IDA's O'Leary said Ireland had less to worry about than the other two countries because of the strong presence of multinationals in its IT and life sciences sectors.
"Bermuda is typically regarded as a tax haven, the Netherlands is regarded as a holding company location that doesn't have a great deal of substance," O'Leary told state radio RTE. "Ireland is part of the equation that brings huge substance with multinational investment."
The American Chamber of Commerce said Obama's plan could have a potentially significant impact for U.S. companies in Ireland but it was reassured Ireland had not been targeted by the United States as an illegitimate tax haven.
"There is a sense of relief that it could have been worse," said Pat Wall, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers who chairs the AmCham's tax policy group. Wall was referring to Obama's comments on the campaign trail ahead of last year's election.
(Reporting by Andras Gergely; Editing by Ruth Pitchford)