of total revenue) in 2017. Member States are required to send a statement of VAT revenues to the EU before July after the end of the budget year. The EU examines the submission for accuracy, including inspection visits by officials from the Directorate-General for Budget and Eurostat, who report back to the country concerned. The country has a legal obligation to respond to any issues raised in the report, and discussions continue until both sides are satisfied, or the matter may be referred to the European Court of Justice for a final ruling. The Advisory Committee on Own Resources (ACOR), which has representatives from each Member State, gives its opinion where Member States have asked for authorisations to leave certain calculations out of account or to use approximate estimates. The ACOR also receives and discusses the inspection results. In 2018, 15 inspections were reported by inspectors to the ACOR. It is anticipated that 12 countries will be visited in 2019. GNI-based own resources National contributions from the Member States are the largest source of the EU budget and are calculated based on gross national income. The Gross National Income (GNI)-based resource is an 'additional' resource that provides the revenue required to cover expenditure in excess of the amount financed by traditional own resources, VAT-based contributions and other revenue in any year. The GNI-based resource ensures that the general budget of the Union is always initially balanced. The GNI call rate is determined by the additional revenue needed to finance the budgeted expenditure not covered by the other resources (VAT-based payments, traditional own resources and other revenue). Thus a uniform call rate is applied to the GNI of each of the Member States. Due to this covering mechanism the rate to be applied to the Member States' gross national income varies from one financial year to another. Nowadays this resource represents the largest source of revenue of the EU Budget (generally around 70% of the total financing). In 2017, due to the higher than usual other revenues and surplus from the previous year the rate of call of GNI was 0.5162548% and the total amount of the GNI resource levied was €78,620 million (representing 56.6% of total revenue). In 2017, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden benefited from an annual gross reduction in their GNI-based contribution (of respectively €130 million, €695 million and €185 million – all amounts are expressed in 2011