Maryland Toll Violation Citation: Costs, Disputes, and Holds

A Maryland toll violation citation is the formal notice you receive after an unpaid video toll goes past its 30-day deadline, and it carries a $25 civil penalty per transaction on top of the original toll. Once the citation arrives, you have three choices: pay the toll and penalty, request an installment plan, or elect to stand trial in District Court.¹ Ignoring it is the one option that guarantees the situation gets worse, because missing the response deadline is treated as an admission of liability and a waiver of your defenses.

What the Citation Contains

The Maryland Transportation Authority (MDTA) sends the citation by first-class mail within 60 days of the violation. It lists your name and address, your license plate number, the toll location, the date and time of the transaction, a copy of the recorded plate image, the original video toll amount, and the $25 civil penalty. It also states the deadline and method for responding and warns that failing to pay or contest counts as admitting the violation.

Before the citation, you should have received a Notice of Toll Due giving you 30 days to pay the video toll. If that notice went unpaid, the debt became a violation and the citation followed. Both documents identify the statutory defenses available to you and explain how to request a transfer of liability if someone else was driving your vehicle.

What It Costs If You Don’t Act

The $25 civil penalty is assessed 15 days after the violation occurs and applies per transaction.¹ For a single missed toll that’s a manageable sum. For a regular commuter running a toll route without a working E-ZPass, the $25 stacks on every pass, and a few weeks of transactions can produce a balance in the hundreds.

Unpaid citations get referred to Maryland’s Central Collection Unit (CCU). CCU is authorized to add an administrative fee of up to 20% of the outstanding principal and interest; the current fee is 17%.² That fee is applied to the full balance of tolls and penalties, so the longer you wait, the larger the base it’s calculated against.

Registration Holds and Suspensions

Maryland enforces unpaid toll violations through your vehicle registration rather than your driver’s license, and there are two levels.

A registration hold can be triggered by a single unpaid final toll violation. The MDTA sends a past due notice warning that your registration will be refused for renewal or transfer, and if you don’t pay within 15 days, the MDTA tells the MVA to block the registration.³ You can keep driving on the current tags until they expire, but you can’t renew or transfer them.

Actual suspension kicks in when a vehicle has at least $1,000 in unpaid final toll violations. At that point the MDTA can move the MVA to suspend the registration itself, and driving on a suspended registration is a separate offense with its own penalties.³

To clear either one, you pay the outstanding video tolls and civil penalties. Once the MDTA receives payment, or receives confirmation from CCU that it has, it must notify the MVA within three business days to release the hold or lift the suspension. If your account has already been sent to CCU, you can also enter a confessed judgment agreeing to pay the full amount, and CCU’s notice to the MDTA is enough to restore your registration before the balance is fully paid.³

How to Contest the Citation

Electing to stand trial sends your case to a Maryland District Court. The citation itself tells you the deadline and how to make that election. This is a court appearance, not an informal review, and you’ll present your evidence to a judge.

The statute identifies specific defenses, and they’re listed on both the original Notice of Toll Due and the citation. A stolen vehicle is one. If a different driver was responsible, the Notice of Toll Due explains how to request a transfer of liability to that person; acting within the timeframe on the notice is what preserves that route.

“I never got the notice” is a hard defense to run. The MDTA’s record of mailing is admissible as evidence that the notice and citation were sent, so this argument generally needs supporting proof, such as evidence that the address on file with the MVA was wrong.¹ Missing the response deadline forfeits your defenses entirely.

Installment Plans

Requesting an installment plan is one of the three explicit response options on the citation, authorized under Transportation Article §21-1417.¹ If your balance has grown into the hundreds or thousands, asking for a plan when you respond to the citation is far cheaper than waiting until CCU adds 17% on top. Make the request within the response window on the citation.

Out-of-State Drivers

If your vehicle is registered outside Maryland, the citation still reaches you and Maryland can still act on it. E-ZPass agencies operate under a reciprocity agreement that lets them share names, addresses, and vehicle information for billing and enforcement, and Maryland’s regulations authorize the MDTA to send past due notices and pursue registration action for vehicles registered in any state with which it has a reciprocal enforcement agreement.³ How aggressively any given state acts on that request varies, but the framework for cross-border collection is in place.

Mistakes That Make the Citation Worse

Treating a single citation as too small to matter is the most expensive mistake. One unpaid video toll runs the entire chain: notice, citation, $25 penalty, CCU referral with a 17% fee, and eventually a registration hold that stops you from renewing your tags.

Letting the response deadline pass is the second. That’s the moment you lose the ability to contest the violation, and it’s also when the MDTA can start moving toward registration action.

Not updating your address with the MVA is the quiet mistake behind many of the others. Everything the MDTA sends goes to the address on file, and a record of mailing is treated as sufficient proof of delivery.¹ If you moved and never updated the record, the first sign of a problem can be a rejected registration renewal, long after your defenses have already lapsed.

1
Maryland General Assembly. Maryland Transportation Article 21-1414
2
Maryland General Assembly. Senate Bill 941 – Transportation-Related Tolls – Installment Payment Plans
3
Legal Information Institute. Maryland Code of Regulations 11.07.07.08 – Collection, Suspension, and Waiver