Meta tags (title and description meta tag in specific) are quite beneficial since they are used by SE’s to create snippets to show in search results.
If you create an impressive title and description, it might help to improve your CTR (click through rate).
I would like to clarify that Google does not consider the Meta Keyword tag at all.
Here’s an exhaustive list of meta tags
http://support.google.com/webmasters...n&answer=79812