The answer to that depends if you are using the term "Meta Tag" in its strict technical sense or as a generic term for all the tags that go in the header section of your page.
Title and Description tags are a must. The title should actually include a couple of descrriptive words. The description should be a good descriptive text including the key terms that people will search on. These should reflect the key terms on the page itself.
Neither of the above are technically "meta tags" although the go in the same area.
The only true meta tag that is of interest in this respect is "keywords". When I first started a web site this was mandatory for getting listed in the then major search engines such as AltaVista. This was pre-Google.
The keywords meta tag was so abused by people trying to foolsearch engines (major search terms ended up taking people to the most unlikely and unsuitable sites) that they are generally disregarded for seaches although they are used to target ads by some programs such as Google Adsense.
The use of values in meta tags, title or description that plainly do not reflect the content of the page concerned is regarded as "black hat" and will lower your search engine ratings.
All of the above compliments good content and good quality inbound links, both of which are essential.
