[targa911S]

Recently I sold my house in Florida. The question here is what to do with the proceeds. I was planning on paying my new house off along with all my outstanding debts. This still leaves me with about $20K in profits. My question is what taxes will I have to pay on the proceeds? Would it be wiser to leave an outstanding balance on my new home, put the money aside in a some solid program and make monthly payments from that account? How does the whole capital gains thing work? Are there any tax write offs from the old house such as painting and upgrades done to prepare it for sale that I can use to offset the taxes? I'm pretty stupid when it comes to this kind of stuff.