On September 21, 2005, the Amsterdam Tax Court (the "Court") elected to submit two preliminary questions to the European Court of Justice (the "ECJ") before reaching a final decision on the issue of whether the Dutch dividend tax system is compatible with EC Treaty rules. In its preliminary judgment, the Court ruled that resident and non-resident shareholders are treated differently for Dutch dividend tax purposes, but that this differential treatment can be justified by the necessity to safeguard the coherence of the Dutch tax system. In this article I will briefly discuss the main issues in the national proceedings and make several preliminary observations.