A lot of the people who are responding to you in this thread and upvoting comments in this thread have no idea what optima is. Your dad is right. It's questionable whether optima is actually worth the $4k you're paying them, but you've already paid $4k to retain a professional who deals with situations like this on a day to day basis. Let them deal with it, they'll do a better job than some armchair redditor who thinks that they'd be able to sweettalk the IRS into ignoring a debt.

Op already paid optima, and their dad is right. This is like saying you can talk to the judge if you don't like what your lawyer is saying. It's true, but unlikely to lead to a useful outcome.

It's a fleur de lis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleur-de-lis (though, yes, it does have importance to French Canadians). Given op said their from Louisiana, I'm guessing they're a Saints fan.